British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIII January and April, 1871 (part 1 of 4)

British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIII January and April, 1871

Transcriber's Note:

Italic text is denoted by underscores and bold text by =equal signs=.

The January Journal has no Article VIII.

THE BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW. JANUARY AND APRIL, 1871. VOLUME LIII.

AMERICAN EDITION.

NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY THE LEONARD SCOTT PUBLISHING COMPANY 340 FULTON STREET, BETWEEN BROADWAY AND NASSAU STREET. 1871.

S. W. GREEN. PRINTER, STEREOTYPER, AND BINDER 16 and 18 Jacob St., N.Y.

INDEX TO VOL. LIII.

Abbott, Rev. Edwin A., Bible Lessons, Part II., 154.

Abbs, Rev. John, Twenty-two Years' Missionary Experience in Travancore, 297.

Ainger, Rev. Alfred, Sermons preached in the Temple Church, 316.

Alcott, L. M., Little Women, 157.

Alford, Henry, D.D., Truth and Trust: Lessons of the War, 318.

American Press, The,; Influence of the Press on Civilization, 1, 2; Raymond's Life, 3; The Newspaper in America, ib.; Reviews, 5; Want of a Comic Periodical, ib.; Roman Catholic Organs, 6; Religious Journalism, 7; The Princeton Review, 8; Superiority of the Independents and Presbyterians in Theological Authorship, 9; General Criticism of the American Press, ib.; Inferiority to that of England, 10; Corruption of the English Language, ib.; Scurrility and Personality, 10, 11; Absence of Anonymous Editorship, 11, 12; Low scale of Morality, though improved of late, 12; Great Power of the Press, and the responsibility which each power involves, 13.

Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Vols. XVII. and XVIII., 151.

Attwell, Henry, A Book of Golden Thoughts, 140.

Barham, Life and Letters of Rev. R. H., by his Son, 209.

Baring-Gould, S., The Origin and Development of Religious Belief--Part II., 142.

Barlowe, Master John, The Bruce, 140.

Barnes in Defence of the Berde, 140.

---- Albert, The Evidences of Christianity in the Nineteenth Century, 147.

Barni, Jules, Napoléon 1er, et son Historien, M. Thiers, 218.

Barrett, G. S., The Revision of the New Testament, a Lecture, 320.

Beauvoir, The Marquis de, a Voyage round the World, 123.

Beecher, Henry Ward, The Plymouth Pulpit, 320.

Belcher, Lady, The Mutineers of the 'Bounty' and their descendants, 115.

Bennet, Rev. James, The Wisdom of the King, 320.

Bentley Ballads, The, 209.

Berkeley's Works, Professor Fraser's Edition of, 256; England's Neglect of her Philosophers, ib.; Berkeley's Historical Position not sufficiently recognised, 257; Mr. Fraser's Picture of him at College, 258; Two earliest books, 259; Berkeley at Court, ib.; Interest in Social Morality, 259, 260; Rapid Church Preferment, 260; He starts for the Bermudas to found a College, ib.; Stops at Rhode Island, and remains there some years, ib.; Writes his 'Alciphron,' 261; Dr. Johnson, ib.; Close of Berkeley's active life, 262; Founds a Scholarship at Yale College, 263; His life as Bishop of Cloyne, ib.; Belief in Tar-water, ib.; Removal to Oxford, 264; Death, ib.; Berkeley's Philosophy, ib.; Views of two classes of his Critics, 265; Too much founded on his Early Writings, ib.; The true Key to his Philosophy, 266; Its relations to Locke and the English Mystics, 266, 267; Three Stages of Development, 268; 'New Theory of Vision,' ib.; 'Principles of Human Knowledge,' 269; The Abstract Idea of Matter, 270; Something more than mere Sensations, ib.; Associations, 271; Deficient Perception of Ethical Relations, 272; The 'Siris,' ib.

Bingham, Hon. Cap., Journal of the Siege of Paris, 291.

Bible, The Holy, arranged in Paragraphs and Sections, 154.

Blackburn, Henry, Art in the Mountains, 129.

Blackmore, R. D., Lorna Doone, 139.

Blunt, Rev. J. H., A Dictionary of Doctrinal and Historical Theology, 146.

Bonapartism, The Downfall of, 218; Analogy between the Imperialism of 1804 and that of 1852, 219; The latter hopelessly collapsed, 220; The Strange Revolution in Literature, 221; The Mutual Hatred of French and Prussians in the Emperor's Favour, 222; His Relations, real and supposed, to Religion, 222, 223; The Second Empire rendered possible by the strength of the Napoleonic Idea, 224; Causes of the Empire's Decay, ib.; Reaction against the Despotism of the Capital, 226; Rottenness of Paris Life, ib.; Ignorance of itself and of other Nations, 227; M. Leclercq's Views, 228; 'Papiers Secrets,' 229; Management of Money, 229, 230; 'Cabinet Noir,' 230; The Emperor warned by Persigny, ib.; Lanfrey's account of Napoleon I., 231; The Erckmann-Châtrian Novels, 232; General political knowledge assumed in them, and with reason, 233; Impossibility of Predicting the Future of France, 234.

Bonar, Horatius, D.D., Life and Truth, 317.

Boorde, Andrewe, The Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge, 140.

Braund, J. H., History and Revelation, 152.

Bray, Mrs., The Revolt of the Protestants of the Cevennes, 116.

Brevia, Short Essays and Aphorisms, by the author of 'Friends in Council,' 310.

Broadus, J, A., D.D., A Treatise on the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons, 148.

Brougham, Life and Times of Lord, 297.

Brown, J. B., First Principles of Ecclesiastical Truth, 314.

---- ---- Misread Passages of Scripture--Second Series, 319.

Brunel, Isambard, The Life of I. K. Brunel, 294.

Buchanan, Robert, Napoleon Fallen, 303.

Bulwer, E. (Lord Lytton), King Arthur, 304.

Bungener, F., St. Paul: his Life, Lectures, and Epistles, 152.

Bunting, Memorials of the Rev. W. M., 120.

Burn, R., Rome and the Campagna, 127.

Burton's History of Scotland, Vols. V., VI. and VII., 161; Important place held by Scotland in English History, ib.; Character of Mr. Burton's Books, 162; Period treated of in the Present Work, ib.; Mary Stuart, ib.; Elizabeth's Policy, 163; Murray, 164; James 1st, 165; The Reformation in Scotland, 166; James as King of the three Kingdoms, 168; Effects of the Union in Scotland, 169; Restoration of Prelacy, ib.; Policy of Charles I., 170; The Covenant, 171; Outbreak of Civil War, 172; Westminster Assembly, 174; Execution of Charles, 175; The Scotch overcome by Cromwell, ib.; The General Assembly Dissolved, ib.; Masterly Policy of Cromwell, ib.; Subsequent History, 176; Estimate of the Book, ib.

Capper, John, The Duke of Edinburgh in Ceylon, 298.

Chamberlayne, T., The Marriage of Peleus and Thetis; and other Poems, 133.

Clarke, C. C., The Riches of Chaucer, &c., 141.

---- ---- Tales from Chaucer in Prose, 141.

Coinage, Report from the Royal Commission on International, 14; Nature of the Question, 14, 15; Mr. Jevons's Investigations, 15, 16; Convention entered into by Four Countries, 16; Importance of England's joining in it, 17; Plan proposed to facilitate this, 17, 18; Comparison of the Amount of Gold Coinage in different Countries, 19; Charges at the Different Mints, 20; Precedent for Change in English Coinage, 21; Small proportion of the Gold brought into the Country Coined, ib.; Summing-up, 22.

Colborne, P., The Measure of Faith; and other Sermons, 319.

Collins, Mortimer, Marquis and Merchant, 309.

Conder, G. W., Tender Herbs, 317.

Cordery, J. G., The Iliad of Homer, Translated, 304.

Cotton, Memoir of Bishop, 295.

Courthope, W. J., The Paradise of Birds, 133.

Cowper, Poetical Works of, Edited by W. Benham, 134.

Creasy, Sir E. S., History of England, Vol. II., 113.

Crowfoot, J. R., Fragmenta Evangelica, 93.

Cubitt, James, Church Design for Congregations, 129.

Cunningham, General, The Ancient Geography of India, 302.

Dale, R. W., The Jewish Temple and the Christian Church, 318.

Darwin, C., The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, 299.

Deane, Life of General, 118.

Diary of a Novelist, 136.

---- of the French Campaign of 1870, 273.

---- of the Besieged Resident in Paris. 291.

Dixon, W. H., Her Majesty's Tower, Vols. III. and IV., 292.

Duncan, P. M., The Transformation of Insects, 126.

Duplessis, G., The Wonders of Engraving, 128.

Early English Texts, 176; Importance of Studying the Early English Language and Literature,176, 177; Efforts made to Facilitate and Promote such Study, 177; Early English Text Society and its Publications, 178; Theological Works, 179; Romances, 180; Fourteenth Century Texts, ib.; The 'Vision of Piers Plowman,' ib.; Mr. Toulmin Smith's edition of 'English Gilds,' 182; 'Early English Alliterative Poems,' ib,; Arthurian Romances, 182-185; The 'Book of the Knight of La Tour Landry,' 186; 'The Wright's Chaste Wife,' ib.; Furnivall's 'Babees Book,' 187; 'Book of Quinte Essence,' ib.; Religions Books, ib.; Condition of the Society, ib.; Its Important Objects, 189.

Eiloart, Mrs., From Thistles--Grapes? 137.

Episcopal Church, Parties in the, 189; Diversities in Opinion and Practice existing in the Church, 189, 190; Dr. Hook's Representation of High Church Views, 190, 191; Those of the Evangelicals, 191; Broad Churchmen the only Men who maintain Clerical Liberty, 192; What Stanley says, ib.; General Spread of a Measure of High Church Feeling, 193; Some little Influence Acquired by Convocation, ib.; Alleged Catholic Revival, 194; Boldness of the Ritualists, 195; Youthful Energy of the Party, ib.; Their Practical Wisdom, 196; The 'Twelve Days' Mission,' 197; The Power of Individuals Utilized, 198; The Advance of the Party Favoured by Circumstances, ib.; Also, by Controversies, 199; By the Fear of a Separation between Church and State, 200; Almost entire Extinction of the 'High and Dry' School, 201; The Anglican Clergyman of To-day, ib.; Contempt for Law, 203; Decline of the Evangelical Party, 204; Causes of that Decline, 206; Approaching Crisis in the Establishment, 209.

Episodes in an Obscure Life, 306.

Erckmann-Châtrian, Romans Nationaux, 218.

Established Church in Wales, The, 72; Principles involved in the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, ib.; Mr. Gladstone's Attempt to escape from applying these Principles to Wales, 73; Influence of England on the Religious History of Wales, 74; The Church Establishment since the Reformation, 75; Its Failure, 77; The Appointments of Englishmen to Welsh Bishoprics, 79; Testimony of two Welsh Clergymen on the subject, 79, 80; Fathers of Welsh Methodism, 80; Effect of the New Movement on the Church, 81; Primary Cause of all the Evils, 84; Comparison of the Established Church with Nonconformists during this Century, ib.; Church Accommodation, 85; Number of Attendants, 87; Schools, 89; Preponderance of Nonconformists in Welsh Literature, 92; The Eisteddfod, ib.; Exceptional Scarcity of Crime in Wales, 93.

Fair France, 125.

Foreign Protestant Pulpit, 318.

France, Alsace and Lorraine, 273.

Francillon, R. E., Earl's Dene, 306.

Fraser, A. C., The Works of Bishop Berkeley, 256.

Fraser-Tytler, C. C., Jasmine Leigh, 309.

French, The late F. W., Things Above, 320.

Froude, J. A., History of England, Vols. VIII.-XII., 126.

Future of Europe, The, 273; The Progress of the Race Interrupted, 274; The Fault not all on One Side, ib.; Prussia's openly avowed Desire of Domination, 275; Excuses made for her Conduct; ib.; Bismark's Ground that of Political Expediency, 276; His False Reasoning, ib.; Prussia will not stop short in her aggressive Career, 277; Her want of Money, ib.; National Character, 278; Prussia's Absorption of all Germany into Herself, 279; The King made Emperor, 280; Despotic Constitution of the Empire, ib.; Austria must also be Absorbed, 281; Holland in Danger, 282; Relations between Prussia and Russia, ib.; What Prussia may do in Turkey, 283; Change of Proportion in the Powers of Europe, 284; Decrepitude of Austria, ib.; Ruined State of France, 285; Effects of her Prostration upon Europe, 286; Isolation of England, 287; Difficulties to be encountered by her, ib.; Duties of her Government, 287, 288.

Gilbert, W., Martha, 307.

Gledstone, J. P., The Life and Travels of George Whitefield, 297.

Gogerly, Rev. G., The Pioneers, 297.

Greg, W. R., The Great Duel, 292.

Hamilton, The late James, D.D., Moses, the Man of God, 153.

Hampden, Some Memorials of Bishop, 296.

Hare, A. J. C., Walks in Rome, 302.

Harold Erle, 307.

Heraud, J. A., The In-Gathering, 134.

Hinton, J., Thoughts on Health and some of its Conditions, 301.

Hood, E. Paxton, the World of Moral and Religious Anecdote, 140.

Hoole, C. H., The Shepherd of Hermas, Translated, 151.

Hoppin, Professor, the Office and Work of the Christian Ministry, 316.

Hutton, R. H., Essays, Theological and Literary, 311.

Ingoldsby, 209; Value of this kind of Writing, 209, 210; Barham's Clerical Life little touched on, 210; Character of his Humour, and his Superiority to others in this Respect, 212; His attacks on Superstition, 213; The 'Ingoldsby Legends' adapted to Young Readers, 214; Deficiency of Poetry in Them, ib.; Hook, 215; Anecdotes, 216.

Interests of Europe in the Conditions of Peace, The, 273.

Jacox, F., Secular Annotations on Scripture Texts, 150.

Jeafferson, J. C., Annals of Oxford, 294.

Juvenile Literature, 154, 309.

Kaye, J. W., The Essays of an Optimist, 140.

Kay Spen, The Green-Eyed Monster, 309.

Keshub Chunder Sen, The Brahmo Somaj, 148.

Landels, Rev. W., D.D., Beacons and Patterns, 318.

Lanfrey, P., Histoire de Napoléon 1er, 218.

Leathes, Rev. S., The Witness of St. John to Christ, The Boyle Lecture for 1870, 149.

Leclercq, Emile, La Guerre de 1870, 218.

Letters on the War, 291.

Lewis, Rev. W. H., D.D., Sermons for the Christian Year, 319.

Louis's own Account of the Fight, 409.

Low, Lieut. C. R., The Land of the Sun, 125.

M'Combie, The late W., Sermons and Lectures, 320.

MacDonald, G., The Miracles of our Lord, 152.

Macduff, J. R., D.D., Memories of Patmos, 153.

Mackennal, A., Christ's Healing Touch, and other Sermons, 319.

MacLeod, A., D.D., Christus Consolator, 148.

Macmillan, Rev., H., The True Vine, 318.

Malmesbury Papers, The, 23; Importance of the Period Comprised, ib.; The Father of the First Earl, 25; Friendship with Handel, ib.; Almack's Rooms Designed, 26; Fashionable Amusements, ib.; Court Dress, 28; The Pantheon, 30; England a Hundred Years Ago, 31; Old London, 32; Paris, ib.; The First Earl, 34; His Diplomatic Embassies, ib.; The Editor of the Books, 35.

Malmesbury, Diaries and Correspondence of James Harris, first Earl of, 23.

---- ---- Letters of the first Earl of, his Family and Friends, 23.

March, Rev. D., D.D., Night unto Night, 154.

Mariette, 138.

Martin, Samuel, Rain upon the Mown Grass, and other Sermons, 150.

Mateer, Rev. S., The Land of Charity, 297.

Matson, W. T., Poems, 134.

Maverick, A., Henry J. Raymond and the New York Press, for Thirty Years, 1.

Meade, Lieut. the Hon. H., A Ride through the Disturbed Districts of New Zealand, 299.

Melville, Henry, Sermons, 318.

Michelet, Jules, La France devant l'Europe, 273.

Mourin, E., Les Comtes de Paris, 54.

Muller, F. Max, Chips from a German Workshop, Vol. III., 139.

Murray, Rev. J., The Prophet's Mantle, 318.

My Little Lady, 307.

Newman, Professor F. W., Europe of the near Future, 273.

O'Flanagan, J. R., The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of Ireland, 288.

Oliphant, Mrs. John, 136.

Oosterzee, Rev. J. J. Van, D.D., The Theology of the New Testament, 145.

Palestine, Explorations in, 36; Purposes and Plans of the Exploration Society, ib.; Early Operations, 36, 37; The site of Capernaum Decided, 37; Ai and Cana, ib.; Synagogues Examined, 38; Tombs, ib.; Temples, 39; Topography of Jerusalem, 40; The old Walls, 44; Site of the Temple, 45; Jewish Archæology, 49; A Museum for the Antiquities Discovered, ib.; Inscriptions, 50; The Moabite Stone, 51; Light thrown by it on Early Writing, 51, 52; Natural History and Geology, 53; Importance of continuing and Encouraging the Society's Work, 53, 54.

Paley, F. A., Religious Tests and National Universities, 235.

Parker, Joseph, D.D., Ad Clerum, 148.

---- ---- The City Temple Sermons, 316.

Parr, Louisa, Dorothy Fox, 308.

Pope, The Works of Alexander, 303.

Porter, Noah, D.D., The American Colleges and the American Public, 302.

Present Day Papers on Prominent Questions in Theology, 144.

Prussian Aggrandisement and English Policy, 273.

Pulpit Analyst, The, 154.

Rae, W. F., Westward by Rail, the New Route to the East, 123.

Rees, T., D.D., History of Nonconformity in Wales, 72.

---- Rev. W., The Church of England in Wales, 72.

Religious Tests and National Universities, 235; Why Disabilities have so long been Retained at the Universities, ib.; Desires on different sides for their removal, 237; Objections brought against it, ib.; Ineffectiveness of Tests, 239; Needless in connection with Sinecures, ib.; Principles recently adopted regarding Education, 240; Importance of the connection between the Universities and Elementary Education, 240, 241; Clerical Fellowships and the effects they Produce, 241; Evidence given before the House of Lords, 242, 243.

Richardson, F., The Iliad of the East, 136.

Robinson, Wade, Loveland., and other Poems, chiefly concerning Love, 133.

Rothschild, C. and A. de, The History and Literature of the Israelites, 143.

Rowlands, Rev. D., Sermons on Historical Subjects, 317.

Ruskin, John, Fors Clavigera, 310.

Schmid, C. F., D.D., Biblical Theology of the New Testament, 145.

Schmidt, A., Elsass und Lothringen, Nachweise wie diese provenzen dem deutschen Reiche verloren gingen, 273.

Scrutator, Who is responsible for the War?, 273.

Seeley, Professor, Lectures and Essays, 114.

Sermons, 316.

Sewell, E. M. and S. M., Yonge, European History, 116.

Shairp, J. C., Culture and Religion in some of their Relations, 149.

Shalders, E. W., Sermons for the Times, 320.

Shand, A. J., On the Trail of the War, 116.

---- A. I., Against Time, 135.

Sieges of Paris, The Early, 54; Comparison of Paris with other Capitals, 55; Its History, 56; Sudden rise in importance, 57; Attacks by the Northmen, 58; Rivalry with Laon, 59; Great Siege of Paris by the Northmen, 60; Abbo's account of it, 61; The Siege Raised, 65; Further Ravages, 66; Second German Invasion, 67; Its Results, 69; Analogies with the War in our Time, 71; Future Fate of Paris, 72.

Six Months Hence, 137.

Stanford, Charles, Symbols of Christ, 317.

Stapleton, A. G., The French Case truly Stated, 273.

Strauss, D. F., Krieg und Friede, 273.

Stubbs, W., Select Charters and other Illustrations of English Constitutional History, 291.

Swainson, C. A., D.D., The Athanasian Creed, and its usage in the English Church--A Letter to Dean Hook, 143.

Tappan, The Life of Arthur, 120.

Taylor, Rev. W. M., The Lost Found and the Wanderer Welcomed, 317.

Tennyson, A., and Arthur Sullivan, The Window; or, the Loves of the Wrens, 130.

Thistleton, Rev. A. C., The Story of Job, 319.

Tholuck, A., D.D., Hours of Christian Devotion, 153.

Thompson, J. P., The Theology of Christ from His own Words, 145.

Tourguéneff, Ivan, S., On the Eve, 308.

Tregelles, S. P., The Greek New Testament, 93; Value of the Work, ib.; The Author's previous Writings, 94; The MSS. he has followed, 95; His Text Compared with Alford's, 97; His Labours interrupted by Illness, 98.

Trench, W. Stewart, Ierne, 305.

Trollope, J. Adolphus. A Syren, 135.

----, Anthony, The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson, 138.

Two Months in Palestine, 125.

Tyerman, Rev. L., Life and Times of Wesley, 119.

Vaughan, C. J., D.D., Christ satisfying the Instincts of Humanity, 316; Half-Hours in the Temple Church, 317; Counsels to Young Students, ib.

Vera, 305.

Victor Hugo, Napoléon le petit, 218.

Victory of the Vanquished. The, 139.

Vince, Charles, Lights and Shadows in the Life of King David, 319.

Wadsworth, Charles, Sermons, 318.

War Correspondence of the Daily News, 291.

War of 1870, The, 98; Possible Results of the War, 98, 99; Its Causes, 99; Sketch of its History, 100; French Scheme and Movements, ib.; Speedy Organization of the Germans, 101; First Battle, 102; Woerth and Forbach, 103, 104; Gravelotte, 105; Insane scheme made for MacMahon, 107; Sedan, 109; Surrender of Metz, 110; Revival of the French Spirit under Trochu and Gambetta, ib.; Wonderful Defence of Paris, 111; Blame attaching to Prussia, 112; Lessons of the War, ib.

War of 1870-1, 243; The Last Half of the Great Drama, 244; Proceedings after the Disaster of Sedan, ib.; Investment of Paris, 245; Trochu's Scheme of Defence, 245, 246; Gambetta's Balloon Journey and Efforts in Collecting Troops, 246; Doings of the Germans, 246, 247; Effects of the Fall of Metz, 247; The promising movements of D'Aurelles de Paladines, ib.; His Failure and its Causes, 248; Change in the German Plans, 249; Their Superiority in Generalship, 250; Was Trochu Incompetent? 251; Chanzy's Brilliant Actions, ib.; Reinforcements obtained on Both Sides, 252; Bourbaki's rash Scheme, 252, 253; Chanzy's Defeat, 253; Bourbaki's attempt at Suicide, 254; Progress of the Siege, 255; Famine, ib.; The War Ended by the Fall of Paris, ib.; The Future of France; ib.

Wardlaw, Gilbert, The Leading Christian Evidences, 147.

Watson, Albert, Cicero, 118.

Wedgewood, Julia, John Wesley and the Evangelical Reaction of the Eighteenth Century, 119.

Wesley, The Poetical Works of John and Charles, 135.

White, John, Sketches from America, 126.

Wickham, The Correspondence of the Right Hon. W., 117.

Williamson, Rev. A, Journeys in North China, Manchuria, and Eastern Mongolia, 121.

Wylie, Rev. J. A., Daybreak in Spain, 125.

THE

BRITISH QUARTERLY

JANUARY 1871

ART. I.--Henry J. Raymond and the New York Press, for Thirty Years. Progress of American Journalism, from 1840 to 1870. By AUGUSTUS MAVERICK. Hartford, Connecticut: A. S. Hale. 1870.

There is no country in the world which so finely illustrates the diffusive spirit of modern civilization as America; for, though in other lands human nature seems to rise to a greater height in individual instances, and to stand out in more picturesque relief, it is the nation which has excelled them all in equalizing the rights, the enjoyments, and the intelligence of man. Many circumstances have contributed to this happy result. America has been clogged by none of the mischievous remains of feudal institutions, and but little affected by those violations of political economy, older than the age of reason, which have checked the free and natural development of European communities. Its provisions for popular education were from the first singularly wise, liberal, and ample; there was no legislation to restrict all civil and social advantages to the members of a single religious sect; and no taxes on knowledge or artificial monopolies of any kind, to prevent the people from having access to that full variety of opinions, inquiries, and statements of fact, which is necessary to intellectual advancement. Above all, it was born old, with all the elements of European civilization to start with, and equipped with a complete literature, in which it would seem almost impossible to find place for any great genius, and with the best English works placed within every man's reach, at less than a tenth of their original cost. Taking these things in connection with the boundless material resources of the country, it is not by any means difficult to explain the magical rapidity of its advances in wealth and population, the signal prosperity it has already enjoyed, and the extraordinary power and greatness to which it is evidently destined.

The development of the press, like the improvement of the means of civilization, is a certain sign of the relative advancement of a nation. We use the term civilization here to signify not so much the development of some elevated and delicate parts of human nature, such as art, philosophy, or politeness, as that of political liberty and social progress; and in this sense the progress of the press becomes historically the most constant and faithful indication of the general progress of a nation. The truth of this proposition becomes evident, from the close connection that exists between the press and the public, from the action and reaction, the efflux and reflux, from the true corporate unity which brings into the press the life-blood of the country. We depend upon the newspaper for distributing knowledge, as well as creating it; it is an instrument by which the opinions and feelings of the people may be guided and developed, as well as communicated and ascertained. It is in fact an essential element in the peculiar spirit and tendency which characterizes our modern civilization. Still we are far from holding that it is a perfect instrument, or free from very serious drawbacks. Eminent men like Lamartine speak of it in terms of extravagant eulogy, predicting that before the century shall have run out journalism will be the whole press, the whole human thought, and that the only book possible from day to day will be the newspaper; a great English novelist speaks of it as a link in the great chain of miracles which prove our national greatness; and Bulwer Lytton calls it the chronicle of civilization, the great mental camera which throws a picture of the whole world upon a single sheet of paper. These somewhat rhetorical representations are very common, but they are far from exact or truthful. We suspect that the newspaper tends in all countries to ignore, more or less, all knowledge that will not render its teaching popular; that its chief figures are often the wicked, the worthless, and the shallow; and that its pictures, though generally faithful, are often false, distorted, and narrow. De Tocqueville liked the liberty of the press, rather from the evils it prevented, than from the advantages it created; and Montalembert represents Liberty as saying to the Press, like the unhappy swain--'Nec cum te nec sine te vivere possum.' John Stuart Mill has two objects of hatred; Puritanism, with its positive creed and aggressive zeal, and the ascendancy of the middle classes, through the newspaper press, with all their mediocrity and bigotry. He has always protested, in the interests of his great idol, individuality, against 'the régime of public opinion,' against the various 'usurpations upon the liberty of private life,' against the moral intolerance of society, carried on through, the newspapers. Amidst these various estimates of the press we are disposed to take a middle course. It may sometimes be wielded by unworthy hands, for unworthy purposes; its liberty may run into licence, and the rules of good taste and propriety be violated; its policy on public questions may be unscrupulous and unprincipled; but we remember that modern progress would have been impossible without it; that the people are not its slaves, but its patrons and critics; and we would lay no other restraint upon it than the invisible fetters imposed by the intelligence and good feeling of its readers. Whether, then, we consider the amount and quality of intellectual force put forth in it, the character of mind acted on by it, and the wide area over which it operates, especially in England and America, where it has the greatest expansion, we cannot but regard it as a subject for sincere congratulation that its influence has been exercised so uniformly on the side of public safety and public morals, that there has been a gradual improvement of late years in the moral tone of newspaper management, and that it has succeeded in creating and fostering a healthy and independent public opinion on all the questions of the age.

The great development of the American press has taken place during the last thirty years, keeping pace exactly with the advancing prosperity of the country. A large number of new and powerful processes, as well as influences of a more general kind, were converging towards this result. The education of the people, the progress of legislation, the discoveries of science, the inventions of art, conspired to make literature, especially in the newspaper form, a prime necessity of American life, and to place it within every man's reach on easy terms; while every improvement made in the art of communication and travel still farther contributed to its growth, and increased its utility. So it has come to pass that America is the 'classic soil of newspapers;' everybody is reading; every class is writing; literature is permeating everywhere; publicity is sought for every interest and every order; no political party, no religious sect, no theological school, no literary or benevolent association, is without its particular organ; there is a universality of print; the soldiers fighting in Mexico or in the Southern states are printing the journal of their exploits on the battle-field; the press is seizing on the whole public life and upon so much of private life as through social irregularity, or individual force of character, or national taste, necessarily emerges into publicity; fostering on the one hand the worship of the almighty dollar, but establishing a strong and wholesome counterpoise, by stimulating that zeal for public education, that enthusiastic spirit of philanthropy, and that truly munificent liberality by which the American people have been always distinguished. As we have already intimated, the modern development of the press is just thirty years old. There was no telegraph before 1843; no fast ocean-steamer to carry news from the old world for some years later; and no Associated Press to organize the supply of intelligence. The first American newspaper was printed at Boston, in 1690, fifty years after the appearance of the first English newspaper; in 1775 there were only 34 newspapers; in 1800, 200; in 1830, 1,000; and the latest statistics give no less than 5,244 as the total number of journals published in the United States, of which 542 are daily, 4,425 are weekly, and 127 are monthly.

Our common idea of the American newspaper is that of a print published by a literary Barnum, whose type, paper, talents, morality, and taste are all equally wretched and inferior; who is certain to give us flippancy for wit, personality for principle, bombast for eloquence, malignity without satire, and news without truth or reliability; whose paper is prolific of all kinds of sensational headings; and who is obliged, in the service of his advertising customers, to become enthusiastic on the subject of hams, exuberant in the praises of hardware, and highly imaginative in the matter of dry-goods. Perhaps this representation might apply, with some degree of correctness, to a portion of the newspaper press, especially that published in the country towns and villages; but we shall immediately see that American literary enterprise, especially in the great cities, is not to be judged by such unworthy examples. The work of Mr. Maverick, which appears at the head of this article, supplies a large amount of information concerning American journalism, connecting its more recent development with the name of Henry J. Raymond, a well-known Republican politician, who founded the New York Times, one of the most respectable and powerful newspapers in the States. We cannot say much for the book, on literary grounds: it exhibits nearly all the worst qualities of Transatlantic journalism itself--flimsiness, personality, and haste; but its information is very interesting and acceptable to European readers. The facts of Raymond's life may be supplied in a few sentences. He was born in 1820, at Lima, in the state of New York; he graduated at the University of Vermont; he went to New York city in 1840, and was introduced to newspaper life by Horace Greeley; he passed ten laborious years on the Tribune, and the Courier and Inquirer; and in the year 1851 he may be justly said to have opened a new era in American journalism, by establishing the Times, a daily paper, which carried temperance and dignity into political discussion, banishing all personalities, and maintaining a high critical and moral tone, which was all but unknown before that period. Like most American journalists, he engaged actively in politics, becoming in 1849 a member of the New York Legislature, and afterwards speaker of the House of Representatives, and Lieutenant-Governor of the State; and in 1864, member of Congress. He was a sincere and upright politician, who always staunchly opposed the slave party in the United States, but lost popularity and credit, by his exceedingly foolish and unfortunate championship of President Johnson, through all his remarkable freaks of obstinacy and eccentricity. On returning home from his office, on the night of the 18th June, 1869, he dropped down in the hall of his house, in a fit of apoplexy, and died five hours afterwards, without recovering consciousness. He was in his fiftieth year. Henry Ward Beecher said, in the funeral oration at his grave, that Raymond 'was a man without hate, and, he might almost say, without animosity; his whole career had been free from bitterness;' and Horace Greeley bore this high testimony to his professional ability;--'I doubt whether this country has known a journalist superior to Henry J. Raymond. He was unquestionably a very clever and versatile, but not powerful writer; and excelled especially in newspaper management.' We shall have occasion to refer again to his services as a journalist.

In proposing to give some account of the American press, both secular and religious, we have to remark that the first great stimulus given to newspaper enterprise in America was by James Gordon Bennett, the well-known editor of the New York Herald, which was established in the year 1834. This able journalist was born in 1800, at Newmill, Keith, Banffshire, of Roman Catholic parents. He was originally designed for the priesthood, and had passed through a portion of his preliminary training in the Roman Catholic College of Blairs, near Aberdeen, but ultimately abandoned the prospects of a clerical life, and emigrated to America, in his nineteenth year--as he said himself--'to see the country where Franklin was born.' There he formed an early connection with the press, but it was not, as we have said, till 1834 that he founded the Herald. We are all more or less familiar with the moral and intellectual characteristics of this newspaper--unsparing personality, intolerable egotism, and sleepless hatred of England; but we are not so foolish as to imagine that the Herald became popular and successful because Americans are fond of personal abuse, or private scandal, or of the ceaseless denunciation of this country. These offences against good taste and right feeling existed long before the publication of the Herald. The secret of its remarkable success lay in the vigour and tact with which Bennett laboured day and night to furnish ample and early intelligence of events in all parts of the world, without regard to cost and labour. Mr. Maverick tells us that 'all the old and heavy-weighted journals, which lazily got themselves before the New York public, day by day, thirty years ago, were undeniably sleepy,' and that 'the ruthless Bennett shocked the staid propriety of his time by introducing the rivalries and the spirit of enterprise which have ever since been distinguishing characteristics of New York newspaper life.' The Herald was successful, then, because Bennett made it his business to present his readers with fresh, ample, and correct news. No editorial eloquence, no skilful flattery of national prejudice or party feeling, could have atoned for any shortcoming in this respect. The other newspaper managers were soon compelled to imitate his energy and skill in the supply of news, and Mr. Maverick has informed us how effectively his example was sometimes followed, by his rivals. On one occasion, before the days of the telegraph, the leading New York journals despatched reporters to Boston, to obtain an early account of a speech by Daniel Webster, who was then in the plenitude of his fame. Two reporters represented each journal; but Raymond alone represented the Tribune. On their return home by the steamer the other reporters passed the night in convivial pleasantries; but Raymond was busily engaged all the time, in a retired part of the vessel, writing off his report for a batch of printers who were on board with their 'cases' of type; so that the entire report, making several columns of the Tribune, was prepared for being printed on the arrival of the steamer at New York, at five o'clock in the morning. The feat was a remarkable instance of newspaper enterprise. The Hudson River steamboats afterwards regularly carried corps of printers with types, from Albany to New York, to prepare the speeches of legislators for next morning's journals. Carrier-pigeons were employed to convey the latest European news from Halifax or Boston to Wall-street; and pilot-boats made long voyages, in stormy weather, to meet Atlantic steamers in search of early news. In election times pony-expresses were appointed by rival journals to carry early intelligence of results; as, in railway times, 'locomotive engines were raced on rival lines of railroad in the interest of papers which had paid high prices for the right of way.' Sometimes a little of that 'smartness,' which is so popular in America, was displayed in these newspaper rivalries, as when, on one occasion, the Tribune reporter ran off to New York on a special engine, hired expressly for the Herald, and thus succeeded in publishing an early and exclusive edition of some important news.

The success of the Herald led Horace Greeley to found the Tribune, in 1841. We can see at once that, like Bennett and Raymond, he was greatly endowed with that species of sagacity which divines at a glance the capabilities of a new project or speculation. Greeley was the son of a New England farmer, and came to New York a poor penniless boy. His earlier essays in newspaper management were total failures; but the Tribune was remarkably successful from its very commencement. It eschewed the coarse and violent style of the Herald, and pursued a far more generous and enlightened policy on public questions, while it almost rivalled the business-like energy of its earlier contemporary; but it ultimately injured itself by its championship of socialism, and a host of other secular heresies. For, though Greeley was of a remarkably practical turn of mind, at least in the management of his own business, he was a great theorist, committed to every recherché novelty in faith and life, a moral philosopher, after a fashion of his own, sincere and liberal in his ideas, with deep sympathies for the working classes, advocating their rights, and seeking their elevation, while he did not fear to expose their follies and their faults. The Tribune became, under his management, the organ of socialism and spirit-rapping, woman's rights, vegetarianism, temperance, and peace principles. It seemed, in fact, the premature harbinger of the 'good time coming,' adept in all the cant of reform, and familiar with the whole philosophy of progress, a very clear vein of sense being perceptible to critical minds, in the elegant sophistry with which it vindicated its own course, and tried to overwhelm all objectors. It attempted, in fact, to turn to account the remarkable tremour of the public mind, which arose from what was seen or said between 1845 and 1855 of mesmerism, electro-biology, spirit-rapping, Swedenborgianism, and psychology; but we are glad to know that the Tribune has greatly improved in its general views, and comes more into accord with common ideas on these curious subjects.

It was the disgust and disappointment of the public with the socialistic heresies of the Tribune, as well as with the shameless and indecent personalities of the Herald, that led to the establishment of the Times, in the year 1851. It took rank at once as a dignified and able journal. Its influence was exercised from the first on the side of morality, industry, education, and religion; and to use the words of an eminent English journalist, now at the American press, 'it encouraged truthfulness, carried decency, temperance, and courtesy into discussion, and helped to abate the greatest nuisance of the age, the coarseness, violence, and calumny, which does so much to drive sensible and high-minded and competent men out of public life, or keep them from entering it.' No one, certainly, has ever done more than Henry J. Raymond for the elevation of the American newspaper. We cannot justly overlook the substantial services done in the same department by the New York Evening Post, under the management of its veteran editor, William Cullen Bryant, the poet; by the New York World, a new paper distinguished by the talent, incisiveness, and dignity of its articles; and by the Nation, managed by Mr. Godkin, an Irishman, once connected with the London press, and which stands upon the intellectual level of the best European periodicals.

We are indebted to Mr. Maverick for a tolerably full account of the present position of New York journalism. There are 150 newspapers published in that city, of which 24 are daily papers, two of them published in the French language, and three in the German. The remainder are weekly journals, of which eighteen are in German, one in Italian, and two in Spanish. There are no less than 258 German newspapers in all America, the largest number being published in Pennsylvania. There are eighteen religious newspapers published in New York. We have the following information in reference to the literary and mechanical arrangements of the daily press:

'Each of the great daily papers of New York to-day employs more than a hundred men, in different departments, and expends half a million of dollars annually, with less concern to the proprietors than an outlay of one-quarter of that sum would have occasioned in 1840. The editorial corps of the papers issued in New York on the first day of the present year numbered at least half a score of persons; the reporters were in equal force; sixty printers and eight or ten pressmen were employed to put in type and to print the contents of each issue of the paper; twenty carriers conveyed the printed sheets to its readers, and a dozen mailing clerks and bookkeepers managed the business details of each establishment. Editorial salaries now range from twenty-five to sixty dollars a week; reporters receive from twenty to thirty dollars a week; and the gross receipts of a great daily paper for a year often reach the sum of one million of dollars, of which an average of one third is clear profit. These statistics are applicable to four or five of the daily morning journals of New York.'

There is much literary ability displayed in the daily and weekly journals of Washington, Philadelphia, Boston, and other leading cities. The Boston Post is a leading paper in that city. It is answerable for all the paradoxical absurdities of the famous Mrs. Partington. The Washington National Era, like the National Intelligencer, of the same capital, has a high position, as a literary and political journal. It was through its columns that Mrs. Stowe first gave to the world her 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' just as Judge Haliburton first published 'Sam Slick, the Clockmaker,' in the pages of a Nova Scotian weekly newspaper.

It is a remarkable fact that the Americans have never produced a Quarterly worthy of the name, except the 'North American Review,' which is certainly below the intellectual level of the four or five English reviews which are reprinted in New York every quarter within a fortnight of their publication in England. It was said, in explanation of the fact that the French had never succeeded in maintaining a review on the plan of the English Quarterlies, that their opinions and parties change so often, and the nation was so volatile, that they could not wait a quarter of a year upon anybody. But this explanation will not apply to the Americans. The 'North American Review' has always had on its list of contributors the very best names in native literature, such as Longfellow, Everett, J. R. Lowell, Motley, Jared Sparks, Caleb Cushing, George Bancroft, and others. Yet its success has been very partial. Its literary position ought to have been far more decided. The 'Atlantic Monthly' holds a deservedly high place in American letters, with such authors as Emerson, Holmes, and Mrs. Stowe among its principal contributors; but its influence has always been thrown into the scale against Evangelical Christianity. 'Harper's Magazine,' published in New York, is an illustrated monthly for the fashionable world, with a circulation of 150,000 copies. 'Bonner's Ledger' has pushed its way into the front rank of weekly magazines, by its romances, its essays, and its poetry, from such writers as Parton, Beecher, Everett, Saxe, Bryant, and many others. The sporting world has its Wilkes' Spirit of the Times; the advocates of woman's rights have the Revolution, in the hands of Susan B. Anthony and E. C. Stanton; the grocers have a Grocers' Journal; the merchants a Dry Goods Reporter; the billiard-players, a Billiard-cue; and the dealers in tobacco, a Tobacco Leaf. The advocates of Spiritualism and Socialism have a large number of journals in their service. But, strange to relate, the Americans have not a single comic periodical like our 'Punch.' Mr. Maverick says that, in the course of a dozen years, many attempts have been made to establish such a print, but without success. 'Vanity Fair' was the best of the class, but its wit and its pictorial illustrations were equally poor and trivial. All the comic papers that flourished for a few years were only remarkable for the immense amount of bad wit they contained, for a wilderness of worthlessness, for an endless process of tickling and laughter; with only an occasional gleam of genuine humour and imagination. If the Americans have failed in producing such a periodical, it is not from the want of literary men possessed of the vis comica, for Oliver Wendell Holmes, James R. Lowell, Shelton, Butler, and Saxe are first-rate humourists. The English comic papers can command all the abounding talent of men like Douglas Jerrold, Albert Smith, W. M. Thackeray, Mark Lemon, Shirley Brooks, Thomas Hood, F. Burnand, and a host of other satirists. The Americans, however, have never had a Tenniel, a Doyle, a Leech, a Du Maurier, or a Keene, to throw off, week after week, the most amusing and instructive of pictorial satires. All they have hitherto done in this department is to copy with tolerable taste and skill the best cartoons and wood-cuts of 'Punch' and our illustrated magazines. Perhaps America has yet to find its Bradbury and Evans. It is evidently most in want of a publisher. After all, there is hardly anything the Americans need more than a good comic paper, to moderate the intensity of their politics, to laugh down the extravagant follies of American society, to measure the strength of their public men, to register their blunders, and expose their hollowness, to watch over the caprices of fashion, to criticize the press itself, with its coarseness and scurrility, its disgraceful advertisements, and its downright fabrications; taking good care to keep free from those sins which so easily beset satirists, rancour, obscenity, and attacks on private character. They need a satirical journal, just to apply to all things the good old test of common sense; and when uncommon wit is allied with common sense in branding any custom or habit as evil, it must be very deeply rooted if it cannot be overturned or modified. Besides, the Americans, as a hard-working race, need a refreshing humour to relieve the strain upon their mental and physical energies. Emerson remarked of Abraham Lincoln, that humour refreshed him like sleep or wine; and a nation so eager in all kinds of work deserves the innocent relaxation that comes from literature in its most sparkling and pleasing form.

The volume of Mr. Maverick makes almost no allusion to an important department of the American press, which demands some notice at our hands, viz., that which ministers to the intellectual and moral wants of the Irish Roman Catholic immigrants. There is no city of any magnitude which does not possess its Catholic organ. New York city is the proper centre of the Catholic press, but Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, Boston, Charleston, and St. Louis have each their weekly paper for the Irish population. Intellectually, these papers are very inferior, and so illiberal that almost every question is viewed from the single standpoint of creed, race, or country. The liberal policy of a free and progressive state has hardly produced the slightest effect upon them. It is a very remarkable fact that in America, as in other countries, journalism is not wielded in the service of Romanism with any freshness and power, except by converts from Protestantism. We find Brownson's Review, the Freeman's Journal, the Shepherd of the Valley (now discontinued), and the Catholic Herald, in the hands of perverts, just as in Europe the Tablet was founded by a convert from Quakerism, the Dublin Review is in the hands of an Oxford pervert, and the Historisch-politische Blätter of Munich was founded by Professor Phillips, and maintained in great scientific efficiency by Yarke, both converts from Lutheranism. The Irish press in America is very ultramontane. It seems drunk with the very spirit of religious servility, mad with the hatred of liberty, and adopts the strictest Roman Catholic doctrines, following them out to their extremest consequences, with a rudeness and arrogance of style, approaching to vulgarity. Orestes Brownson says that the Pope is nowhere so truly Pope, and finds nowhere, so far as Catholics are concerned, so little resistance in the full exercise of his authority as in the United States. No European editor, except Veuillot, ever wrote in the style of Brownson himself, who is intellectually without a peer among Romish editors; for he takes the strongest and most unpopular ground as the very foundation of his ecclesiastical and political theories. Veuillot shocked the good sense and liberal feeling of Europe, by defending the Inquisition and the St. Bartholomew massacre; but Brownson despises all prudential considerations, in claiming for his church the right to put heretics to death, for he holds that this is punishment, and not persecution. The Shepherd of the Valley held that the question of punishing heretics was one of mere expediency, and declared that in the event of his church gaining the ascendancy in America, there would be an end of religious toleration. The Pittsburgh Catholic censured these outspoken utterances; but the Boston Pilot rebuked its Pittsburgh contemporary for its censures, declaring that the Shepherd of the Valley said nothing that was not true; yet saying itself, with marked inconsistency, 'No Catholic wishes to abridge the religious rights of Protestants.' It is in perfect consistency with such ultramontane ideas that these Irish newspapers uniformly take the side of royal despots in great national struggles, and deny all sympathy to revolutionary leaders except those of Ireland. Though they usually cry out lustily when any step in American legislation or any popular combination manifests even an appearance of hostility to Catholic interests, they actually had the audacity, in 1859, to defend those royal miscreants of Italy, who rioted in the misery of their subjects, and of whom it was truly said, 'They kept one-half of their people in prison and the other half in fear of it.' They sympathised with the Poles in their last insurrection, because their oppressor was a schismatic; they had no sympathy with Hungarians, or Italians, or Spaniards, because their oppressors were Catholics. The Boston Pilot--the most popular journal of the Irish--forgot its rôle so far in 1848, as to take a liberal view of the European revolutions. The result was that the Univers, in giving an account of Catholic journalism in America, excluded the Pilot from its list of the orthodox; the clergy, moreover, condemned it; and it was obliged to express its penitence for such an error of judgment. The Pilot, after all, is more reasonable and less fanatical than most of the Catholic papers, and is specially copious in its reports of Catholic news. All these Irish newspapers are, without exception, bitterly anti-English in their tone and spirit. One might suppose that having escaped from misery and poverty, and launched upon a new career of prosperity and contentment, the Irish could afford to forget England; but, like their teachers at the press, they are strong in historical grudges, and their hatred to this country is as much theological as political. The Irish-American journalist delights in copying into his paper the abuse of England, collected from all quarters of the world, and in times of war or rebellion depreciates our triumphs and magnifies our misfortunes. The Catholic clergy have found it hard to control the opinions of a portion of their Irish countrymen, who, though sufficiently submissive in spiritual concerns, have shown a disposition to assert an independence of clerical control in matters affecting the interests of Ireland. Sometimes, indeed, the clergy have been led to humour this national feeling, as when they were in the habit of attending the 'Tom Moore Club,' at Boston, though it had been more than suspected that the favourite poet had died out of the pale of the church. At length the Shepherd of the Valley pointedly condemned their appearance at the annual banquet, on the ground that the poet was ashamed of his country's religion during life, and that English preachers performed the obsequies at his grave. The appearance of Thomas Francis Meagher in America, after his escape from penal servitude in Australia, greatly perplexed the bishops and clergy; but the mot d'ordre went forth, and all the Catholic newspapers in America, with a single exception, assailed him with the greatest bitterness, for his enlightened opinions upon religious liberty, and upon the relation between Church and State. Thousands of the Irish, notwithstanding, rallied round Meagher; and the Irish-American was established, for the vindication and enforcement of his principles. There are a few other organs of Irish nationality, including the Irish People, of John Mitchell, published in America, but, with the exception of the People, they are all contemptible, in every point of view. You find in their pages column after column of windy jargon and tawdry rhetoric, which would consign an English editor to a madhouse. This gaudy and ornate style, with a profusion of florid imagery and Oriental hyperbole quite overpowering, seems to characterise every Nationalist journal. It is these papers that have inflated the Fenian bubble. We pity the deplorable ignorance of the Irish masses, their misguided enthusiasm, and their preposterous pertinacity in the pursuit of visionary ends; but we have no language too severe to apply to their intellectual leaders who pursue their ignoble calling from a mercenary calculation of the profits to be derived from bottomless credulity. We fear that the Irish press generally has succeeded in imparting an education to the emigrés that can serve only to nurture hatreds, which, like curses, too often come home to roost, and that some considerable time may be expected to elapse before all the appliances of American civilization and Christianity shall succeed, as they most certainly will, in the assimilation of such intractable materials.

Our notice of the American press would be incomplete without some account of that ample supply of religious literature which is furnished by thousands of weekly, monthly, and quarterly periodicals. The religious newspaper is almost peculiar to America, and is far superior to any similar publication in England. The English paper is more ecclesiastical and less religious; the American, while equally strenuous and careful in the advocacy of denominational claims, supplies much of what we usually obtain here from the Sunday Magazine and the Family Treasury. The literary superiority of the religious press over the secular in America arises mainly from the fact that its conductors and contributors are mostly clergymen who have been graduates of colleges, and are possessed of a considerable amount of classical culture and training. Every denomination has a large number of weekly organs. The two leading newspapers of the class are the New York Independent and the New York Observer, the former an organ of the Congregationalists, and the latter of the Presbyterians. The Independent was originally conducted by the Rev. Dr. Bacon, the Rev. Dr. Thompson, and the Rev. Richard Storrs, jun.; it afterwards passed into the hands of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, who wielded it with great power and efficiency in the anti-slavery cause; and it is now managed by Theodore Tilton in company with several others. It contains a great variety of religious, political, and general news, devotional and literary pieces of great merit, together with foreign and domestic correspondence, written with an excellent spirit. Mr. Beecher has established, and conducts, the Christian Union, another religious paper, which is rapidly rising to popularity and power. The Advance, a religious paper published in Chicago, and conducted by Dr. Patten, is one of the best of the religious papers of America. The Observer is one of the oldest and best established papers, once exceedingly Conservative in its views of slavery, but always distinguished by sound judgment, good taste, and fair culture. The Methodists are well represented by the Christian Advocate and Journal, and the Baptists by the Examiner and Chronicle. The monthly organ of the American Tract Society has a circulation of about 200,000, which it owes to its catholic character and its extraordinary cheapness. The quarterly literature of the American churches is of a very high character. The Bibliotheca Sacra is the great organ of New England theology, and the Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review is the leading representative of the Calvinism of the Westminster standards. These are the two most powerful reviews. The Bibliotheca Sacra is published at Andover, the scene of the learned labours of Moses Stuart, the biblical expositor, and was established twenty-seven years ago. It differs from the Princeton Review and all British reviews in publishing the names of its contributors, and it has succeeded in gathering to its pages a vast amount of the most versatile talent from nearly all the Congregational Colleges of America. Its most original contributor in the domain of metaphysical theology is Professor Austin Phelps, of Andover, whose articles on 'The Instrumentality of the Truth in Regeneration,' and 'Human Responsibility as related to Divine Agency in Conversion,' published within the last two or three years, prove that much of the genius and spirit of Jonathan Edwards still exists in New England theology. Another eminent contributor, Professor Park, of Andover, who is also its principal editor, has been frequently in collision with Dr. Hodge, of the Princeton Review, on points of Calvinistic divinity. Professor Bascom has been recently publishing in its pages a series of articles on 'The Natural Theology of Social Science'--a subject hitherto left too much in the hands of secularists--and has succeeded in lifting it with advantage into the higher sphere of theology. The articles of this review are generally marked by a high style of ability and a scientific thoroughness: and are, many of them, worthy of being reproduced, as they have been, from time to time, in the British and Foreign Evangelical Review. The spirit of its management is exceedingly liberal. We observe, for example, that it recently published an article on 'Christian Baptism,' from the professor of a Baptist College, in conformity with a plan adopted by the conductors of securing from representative men of different sects and schools of thought, articles unfolding distinctive, theological opinions, and exhibiting with something like scientific precision the exact peculiarities of meaning attached to the terminology of the respective schools. The Princeton Review is the oldest quarterly in the United States. It was established in 1825 by Dr. Charles Hodge, the well-known commentator on the Epistle to the Romans, who was then, and still is, a Professor in the Princeton Theological Seminary; but it was not till 1829 that it ceased to be a mere repertory of selections from foreign works in the department of biblical literature. It is, beyond all question, the greatest purely theological review that has ever been published in the English tongue, and has waged war in defence of the Westminster standards for a period of forty years, with a polemic vigour and unity of design without any parallel in the history of religious journalism. If we were called to name any living writer who, to Calvin's exegetical tact, unites a large measure of Calvin's grasp of mind and transparent clearness in the department of systematic theology, we should point to this Princeton Professor. He possesses, to use the words of an English critic, the power of seizing and retaining with a rare vigour and tenacity, the great doctrinal turning-points in a controversy, while he is able to expose with triumphant dexterity the various subterfuges under which it has been sought to elude them. His articles furnish a remarkably full and exact repository of historic and polemic theology; especially those on 'Theories of the Church,' 'The Idea of the Church,' 'The Visibility of the Church,' 'The Perpetuity of the Church,' all of which have been reproduced in English reviews. The great characteristic of his mind is the polemic element; accordingly we find him in collision with Moses Stuart, of Andover, in 1833, and with Albert Barnes in 1835, on the doctrine of Imputation; with Professor Park, in 1851, on 'The Theology of the Intellect and the Theology of the Feelings;' with Dr. Niven, of the Mercersburg Review, in 1848, on the subject of the 'Mystical Presence,' the title of an article which attempted to apply the modern German philosophy to the explanation and subversion of Christian doctrines; with Professor Schaff, in 1854, on the doctrine of historical development; and with Horace Bushnell, in 1866, on vicarious sacrifice. In fact, a theological duel has been going on between Andover and Princeton for nearly forty years, the leading controversialists of Andover being Stuart, Park, Edward Beecher, Baird, and Fisher, and those of Princeton, Hodge, the Alexanders, and Atwater.[1] Hodge has contributed one hundred and thirty-five articles to the Review since its commencement; Dr. Archibald Alexander--a venerable divine, who resembled John Brown, of Haddington, in many respects--contributed seventy-seven; his son, Dr. James Waddel Alexander, twice a Princeton Professor, and afterwards pastor of the wealthiest congregation in New York, contributed one hundred and one articles; another son, Dr. Joseph Addison Alexander, the well-known commentator on Isaiah, contributed ninety-two, mostly on classical and Oriental subjects; and Dr. Atwater, another Princeton professor of great learning and versatility, contributed sixty-four on theological and metaphysical subjects. The articles in the Princeton on science, philosophy, literature, and history, have generally displayed large culture and research. The review of Cousin's Philosophy, in 1839, by Professor Dod, was one of the most remarkable papers that appeared on the subject in America, and was afterwards reprinted separately on both sides of the Atlantic. Another theological quarterly of America, is the New Englander, published at Newhaven, Connecticut, and representative principally of Yale scholarship. Nearly all the leading names in New England theology, such as Bellamy, Hopkins, Emmons, Dwight, Griffin, Tyler, and Taylor, among the dead, and Bushnell, Beecher, and Bacon, among the living, are associated with the venerable University of Yale. Tryon Edwards (the great-grandson of Jonathan Edwards) is one of the contributors to the New Englander. The professors and graduates of the college are its principal contributors. Among them are to be found the distinguished names of Dr. Noah Porter and President Woolsey. The former has recently contributed to the New Englander, a series of valuable articles, just reprinted in a small volume, on 'The American Colleges and the American Public;' an able discussion of the fundamental principles of University education. The Mercersburg Review is the quarterly organ of the German Reformed Church, and has been conducted, from its commencement, by Dr. Niven and Professor Schaff, the well-known historian. The Baptists have their Christian Review, the Methodists their Methodist Quarterly Review, the Lutherans their Evangelical Review, the Episcopalians their Protestant Episcopal Quarterly Review, and the Unitarians their Christian Examiner, which reflects from time to time the vicissitudes of Unitarian opinion. There is one fact suggested by this review of the American religious press, viz., that Episcopacy holds a very inferior place beside Independency and Presbyterianism in theological authorship. We all know how greatly things are changed, even in England, since Dr. Arnold deplored, and all but despised, the culture of Dissenters, for we have Dean Alford, but the other day, confessing in the Contemporary Review, 'Already the Nonconformists have passed us by in Biblical scholarship, and ministerial training.' But in the United States, the palm of theological scholarship has always rested in the hands of Congregational and Presbyterian divines. The best theological seminaries, the ablest theological reviews, and the most original as well as extensive authorship in the various branches of theology, belong to the two denominations referred to.

We shall now proceed, as briefly as possible, to make some observations of a critical nature upon the intellectual and moral character of the American press generally. It is not, certainly, in any spirit of national superiority that we point to the undoubted fact that, notwithstanding the great expansion of newspaper literature in the States, the wide diffusion of popular education, and the circulation of English books of the best kind at a mere nominal cost, the Americans have as yet produced nothing representatively like our London Times, or Punch, or the Athenæum, or the Illustrated London News, or the Saturday Review, or the Art Journal, or the Edinburgh and Quarterly. They have not even produced a single great newspaper writer like Captain Stirling, of the Times, Albany Fonblanque, sen., of the Examiner, or Hugh Miller, of the Edinburgh Witness, for Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond, though capital editors, are all greatly inferior to these men in that art of scholarly, dignified, and tasteful leader-writing, which gives such a power and charm to London journalism. Newspaper writing is, perhaps, the most difficult of all writing; there is none at least in which excellence is so rarely attained. The capacity of bringing widely-scattered information into a focus, of drawing just conclusions from well-selected facts, of amplifying, compressing, illustrating a succession of topics, all on the spur of the moment, without a moment's stay to examine or revise, argues great intellectual cultivation. The articles may not be of a lofty order, or demand for their execution the very highest kind of talent, but the power of accomplishing it with success is very uncommon, and of all the varieties of ways in which incompetency is manifested, an irrepressible tendency to fine writing is associated with the greater number of them. De Tocqueville says that democratic journalism has a strong tendency to be virulent in spirit and bombastic in style. It certainly runs the risk of lawlessness, inaccuracy, and irreverence, with much of vehemence, and with little taste, imagination, or profundity. One serious charge we have to bring against the American newspapers is, that they have sorely vulgarized and vitiated the English language. We are aware that many of them imagine the language of their country to be the standard as to idiom, pronunciation, and spelling, and any English variation from their golden rule as erroneous and heterodox; but such critics are entitled to no consideration whatever. If men of education at the American press refuse to study the style of the great authors who fixed and purified the language of our common forefathers, so that we may have one and not two languages spoken on opposite sides of the Atlantic, let them at least imitate such writers of their own as Washington Irving, Horace Bushnell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose pure and native English is wholly free from all the corruptions and affectations of phrase which overrun American newspapers, simply because it is beautifully modelled upon the most elegant and polished writers of English literature. In fact, the Americans have always been greatly in need of a critical organ, like the old Edinburgh Review, to purify the literary atmosphere from the clouds and mists of false taste which deface it, to stand censor on books and newspapers, a recognized authority in the literary republic, for whose quarterly judgments readers might look with interest, and authors with trembling. The North American Review, though written with great spirit, learning, and ability, and abounding in profound and original discussions on the most interesting subjects, has never filled the place of the Edinburgh, and, indeed, its own style is not free from the common sin of affectation. It is pleasant to think of William Cullen Bryant, the poet, hanging up in the office of his newspaper--the New York Evening Post--a catalogue of words that no editor or reporter is ever to be allowed to use.[2] Let us hope that the literary men of America, of all classes, will seriously aim at the formation of a purer, chaster, and juster style of writing, for what they have hitherto produced has been defective in taste rather than in talent.

Another great sin of American journalism is its intolerable personality, violence, and exaggeration. This was the disgrace of our own English press at no distant period. Cobbett was a great sinner in this respect, He had much to do with raising the intellectual, and lowering the moral, reputation of the modern newspaper. The wide diffusion of enlightened views on politics and religion is attested, however, in a remarkable manner among ourselves, by the moderation of tone which we now see in journals which, about twenty years ago, were remarkable for their scurrility and violence. It is no longer a recommendation to an English newspaper to be known as an assailant of the Royal Family, the aristocracy, the bench of bishops, or parsons. Several publications that, a few years since, professed atheism and secularism, have become extinct, and the quondam organs of Chartism and fierce democracy have been obliged to become respectable. But many of the American newspapers are much worse than the English were a quarter of a century ago. With us, faction has become less mischievous and shameless; unfounded accusations less common and less malignant; invectives more measured and decorous; not merely because the evil passions which required to be fed with the abuse of individuals have calmed down, but because the British press is now guided by the principle of attacking public opinion, not private characters, measures, not men; and its quarrels are usually governed by the laws of honour and chivalry, which proscribe all base advantages. Put an American newspaper cannot assail another newspaper without mentioning the editor's name, and calling him coward or rascal. If you cannot answer your opponent's objections, you caricature his appearance, or dress, or diet, or accent, as Bennett is in the habit of treating Greeley; and if you are foiled by his wit, you recover your advantage by stabbing his character. No allusions become too indecorous for your taste; no sarcasms too bitter for your savage spite; and no character pure enough to be sacred from your charges and insinuations. The American editor pursues his antagonist as if he were a criminal. The New York World lately devoted four columns of its space to illustrate by quotations the amenities of American journalism. The majority of the papers seem to subsist on the great staple of falsehood and personality, and enjoy all the advantages which spring from an utter contempt for the restraints of decency and candour; and we are strongly of opinion that this work of cruel intimidation is pursued with unrelenting eagerness, not from the influence of angry passions or furious prejudices, but in the cold-blooded calculation of the profits which idle curiosity or the vulgar appetite for slander may enable its authors to derive from it. We are not prepared to endorse all the strong statements made by infuriated rivals concerning the proprietor of the New York Herald; but he leaves us, in no doubt, himself, as to the light in which he regarded his own frequent chastisements. Immediately after James Watson Webb had severely whipped him in the streets of New York, the whole affair was recounted, in the Herald with a sensational circumstantiality that had an evident eye to business, though we cannot overlook the remarkable good humour with which Bennett treated the whole affair:--

'The fellow,' he says, 'no doubt wanted to let out the never-failing supply of good humour and wit which have created such a reputation for the Herald, and appropriate the contents to supply the emptiness of his own skull. He didn't succeed, however, in rifling me of my ideas. My ideas in a few days will flow as freshly as ever, and he will find it to his cost.'

Imagine the London Times degraded to the condition of its responsible editor rejoicing in his own personal chastisement! American journalists fight like their French brethren. They never dream of explanations. Bullets and bowie-knives are the natural sequel of such recriminations as disgrace their newspapers. This extreme violence is part of the loose political morality so common there. Americans seem to be taught almost from their infancy to hate one-half of the nation, and so contract all the virulence and passion of party before they have come to the age of reason; but before their newspapers can be said to enter upon the course of real usefulness which is open to them, they must have come to believe that political differences may exist without their opponents being either rogues or fools. Jefferson said in his day that the scurrility of the press drove away the best men from public life, and would certainly have driven away Washington had he lived to suffer from its growing excesses. James Fenimore Cooper, the celebrated novelist, had a horror of newspapers, and instituted actions at law against a host of them for literary libels. He once remarked, 'The press of this country tyrannizes over public men of letters, the arts, the stage, and even private life. Under the semblance of maintaining liberty, it is gradually establishing a despotism as ruthless and grasping and one that is quite as vulgar as that of any Christian state known.' This view of the case is certainly serious and suggestive. Party violence may be carried to a length that defeats itself, for it may harden public men against all newspaper criticism whatever, to the great injury of public affairs, and thus lower the estimation and disturb the course of public opinion. Nowhere are fools more dogmatic than in politics, and nowhere are wise men more doubtful and silent; but American party writers have no respect for the Horatian maxim, 'in medio tutissimus'--the secret of that moderation of opinion which has distinguished the most genial and sagacious men in our political world. They must really learn to cultivate a love of truth and justice; they should seek to attain the power of holding the scales steadily, while the advantages or disadvantages of every question are fairly weighed; they should stamp upon their professional life the impress of personal rectitude and honour, and not wait--to copy the tone of the old apologies--till a higher standard of public morals, and a more intelligent cultivation of political and literary inquiries, shall have raised for them a new class of readers. It is the prerogative of genius to create the light by which it is to be understood and appreciated; but the working talents of a country, which are identified with its immediate interests, ought at least to rise a little above the surrounding level.

We are led, from this point, to notice another defect in American journalism,--the absence of the anonymous usage, which is, indeed, mainly answerable for the scurrility and violence already referred to. The British editor is usually unknown to the public; the French journalist subscribes his name at the foot of his articles; but the American editor publishes his name and address boldly at the top of his newspaper. The effect of this custom is to identify the authority of the journal with the personal influence of the editor; it tends to a habit of deciding questions on personal grounds, and to a far too marked superfluity of the tu quoque argument. The object of the American journalist is not so much the instruction of the public as the political advancement of himself, for journalism usually forms the first stage in the course of an ambitious politician, or a rising statesman; and the American usage is certainly very well adapted to this end. Our anonymous habit limits the discussions of the press and abolishes egotism, while it certainly tends to debar personalities. It has been remarked, as a suggestive fact, that personality is the common vice of the only free press in the world, which ignores the anonymous principle; and that in England, under a contrary usage, personality is little known, always reprobated, and, indeed, in cases of flagrant personal attacks, the authorship is usually but thinly disguised. It is absurd to defend the American habits as manly and ours as cowardly; for their habit tends to make writers far from circumspect or considerate of the feelings of others. But, in fact, the publicity in which American journalists delight is only akin to the publicity of American life generally. The British public would not tolerate the intrusion of the press into private or family concerns; yet one New York paper published, in the panic, of 1857, the name of every gentleman who bought a silk dress for his wife, or gave a dinner-party to his friends. Other newspapers criticize the dress and appearance of ladies at balls and cricket parties, the personality of their praise being almost as offensive as at other times the coarseness of their vituperation.

We confess that we do not entertain a very high opinion of the morality of the American press, though we admit there has been a sensible improvement within the last thirty years. Emerson made the remark, in his 'English Traits,' that the London Times was an 'immoral institution,' on the ground we presume, of its frequent changes of opinion. We are far from defending the leading journal in its policy of tergiversation--for there can be no doubt it ever fights on the stronger side, upholds no falling cause, and advocates no great principle--but it was never yet bought with bribes or cowed by intimidation. It has sometimes shown that it is conducted on principles superior to mere money considerations, for, during the Railway mania of 1845, when its advertising sheet was overrun with projected lines of railway, realizing to the proprietors the enormous sum of from £2,839 to £6,687 per week, the Thunderer turned its fire on these projects, and lost nearly £3,000 in a single week. We do not charge the American press with any flagrant changes of policy or principle, for we believe it is, in these respects, sufficiently consistent. But we deplore the absence of high moral purpose, as well as independence in its discussions of public questions. The American people demand a large amount of flattery; they have come almost to loathe the wholesome truth; they must be pampered with constant adulations, so that no one will venture to tell them their faults, and, neither at home nor abroad, dare moralists venture a whisper to their prejudice. This is a serious drawback. America wants more writers of the class who are said to prefer their country's good to its favour, and more anxious to reform its vices than cherish the pride of its virtues. Besides, we strongly suspect that the American journalist is very careless about the truth. We mean the truth of fact, which is part of the historic disposition of the age, as opposed to all that is sensational. He resembles the French rather than the English journalist in the tendency to regard good news as more important than correct news. The English journals make it their business to present their readers with news and not advice, with facts and not opinions, so that they can form opinions for themselves, and the power of our press is thus enormously increased, but only on conditions that effectually prevent the arbitrary exercise of it. The American writers for the press have followed our example in some degree, but their disposition to provide startling and sensational intelligence is too often manifested at the expense of truth. Mr. Maverick gives an account of a number of disreputable hoaxes played by the newspapers upon the public of America, which were justified, we presume, to the consciences of the authors by the observation of Lord Bacon--'A mixture of lies doth ever add pleasure; doth any man doubt that if there were taken from men's minds vain opinions, nattering hopes, false valuations, and the like, it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things?' The 'Moon Hoax,' which was published in the New York Sun in 1835, was one of the most skilful and successful of these literary frauds. Successive numbers of that paper contained a pretended extract from the pages of a supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of Science, under the title of 'Great Astronomical Discoveries latterly made by Sir John Herschel, LL.D., F.R.S., at the Cape of Good Hope.' The paper had a remarkable air of scientific research, such as might deceive all but the most learned and wary. The Herschel telescope was represented as affording a distinct view of lunar roads, rocks, seas, cascades, forests, houses, people, and monsters of various shapes. The 'Roorback Hoax' was a shameless attempt to injure the character of J. K. Polk, when he was a candidate for the Presidency, by representing him as possessing forty-three slaves who had his initials branded into their flesh. The deception was wrought by simply adding to a sentence in Featherstonehaugh's Travels in America four lines of the hoaxer's own, recording the disgraceful lie referred to. We confess that we cannot recognise the morality of a transaction which Mr. Maverick records in the history of the New York Times, without apparently the slightest suspicion of its dishonesty. When the New York Herald got hold of the single survivor of the ill-fated Atlantic steamer, Arctic, which was lost in September, 1854, an assistant on the Times succeeded, by means of an adroit pressman, in purloining an early copy from the Herald press-rooms, and actually published the Herald's report an hour earlier than that journal. We cannot understand what Mr. Maverick means by representing the Herald as 'playing a trick to keep the news from the other papers,' unless the Herald was actually bound to supply its contemporaries gratuitously with the exclusive news it had obtained from the survivor at its own sole expense. The transaction seems to us merely a clever specimen of American 'smartness.'

But we must draw these observations to a close. We cannot but admit that the press of America, with all its defects, is an engine of great power. It is on this ground we desire for it a close approximation to those intellectual and moral qualities which have given British journalism such an influence over the affairs of the whole world. In fact, two such nations as America and Britain, working in the same language, should be always learning from each other; for the eager energy of the one should push forward the occasionally lagging progress of the other, and our matured caution restrain their hasty inexperience. America is great in all that leads to immediate and available results. She has given us several of the greatest mechanical inventions of the age; she has far excelled us in the theory and practice of religious liberty, as well as in the more liberal recognition of denominational brotherhood among the religious sects; while she has furnished a noble example of public spirit in the support of religion, missions, and education. Let us hope that in time she will equal, if not surpass us in a periodical literature, which, if even still more intensely political than ours, will display a breadth and strength of thought, together with a wisdom and dignity, which will add immensely to its power. There is one aspect of Transatlantic literature which already contrasts favourably with our own, and that is its generally cordial recognition of Evangelical Christianity. With the exception of the German and French newspapers, which chafe under the restraints of a Christian country, and scoff at Judaic sabbaths, Pharisaic church-going, and tyrannical priestcraft, there are no newspapers of any position in the States that are avowedly anti-Christian; and there is less disposition than formerly, on the part of the American press generally, to exclude all reference to distinctive Christianity. It was considered a remarkable circumstance at the time of the American revival that several newspapers, notorious for a thinly disguised infidelity, and for a most undisguised enmity to Evangelical religion, should not only publish the most ample reports of the movement, but commend it in a way that has had no parallel in English journalism, even before the tide of public opinion had turned decisively in its favour. It is the common custom still for American newspapers to print the sermons of popular preachers, and to publish a large amount of religious intelligence. The press is also intensely Protestant, and has contributed to the growth of that enormous assimilating power by which American Protestantism has absorbed generation after generation of the Roman Catholic emigrants. The statistics of the Propaganda declare that one half of the whole number has been lost to the Church of Rome; and the explanation is, that they can no more escape from the influence of American ideas than from the effects of the atmosphere and climate.

It becomes, therefore, a matter of the greatest consequence that the literary guides of a nation with such a destiny as America, should understand the responsibilities under which their power is exercised. They should take care, above all things, to use their influence not to materialize the mind of society, by obtruding material concerns too much upon the attention, to the neglect of those moral and spiritual interests which constitute the very foundations of its greatness. This is a real danger, for, as De Tocqueville remarks, the tendency of modern democracy is to concentrate the passions of men upon the acquisition of comforts and wealth. They cannot be ignorant that the most clearly marked line of social progress over the whole world is coincident with the line of the Christian faith; that wherever true religion has had free access to the centres of human action, a palpable advance has been made in knowledge, liberty, and refinement; while poverty, injustice, and licentiousness, which are the ulcers of a depraved society, have in that degree been checked and healed. They must understand that honesty is the grand necessity of the world at this time, in its politics as well as its theology, in its commerce as well as its science. Let these things be understood by the leaders of American thought, and we cannot but anticipate a proud future for their country. It is a subject of just congratulation to England that her children have stamped their character on a vast continent, and, that instead of discontented colonies subjected to her caprice, she can now point to a great people, with all the best life of the ancient nations throbbing in their veins, flourishing exactly in proportion to their freedom, and trained, through all their bloody disasters which almost threatened to ruin their work, to build a stronger rampart, and to reclaim a broader shore for posterity. The interests of humanity demand that a nation so strong in all the material elements of civilization, and manifesting such an impetuous disregard of limit and degree in all its enterprises, should be equally strong in its intelligence and its Christianity.

ART. II.--Report from the Royal Commission on International Coinage. 1868.

Although during the deplorable struggle between Germany and France public attention has been of necessity mainly directed to the conflict, yet it is impossible, for many reasons, to do otherwise than regret this concentration of interest. The last session of our Parliament was fertile to an unusual degree in measures of public utility and importance; but it is not too much to say that the difficulties incurred by several of these measures in their passage through both Houses would have been greatly enhanced had the engrossing events which have recently agitated all Europe occurred at the time. The only satisfaction which can be obtained in contemplating, even from a distance, the misery inflicted on such countless thousands, arises from the hope that when the last echoes of the strife have faded away, a peace, firm and durable--durable because based on sound principles--may link together those nations who are now suffering from the effects of the struggle. Till this is the case, the evils arising from the war will not be confined to those actually engaged in it. Meanwhile, it is really no slight misfortune that many subjects, not unimportant to the country, should fail to obtain the attention which they would otherwise have received, in consequence of the superior interest of the central European crisis.

Professor Jevons' remarks at the late meeting of the British Association at Liverpool, on the manner in which points of importance were thus swamped, will not readily be forgotten by those who heard them. Among other subjects, the Professor instanced that of an international coinage, which, after having received considerable and careful attention, had receded for a time from that prominence which it deserved.

In this country, the question has been considered from two points of view--the one taken by those who are desirous to adopt a universal system of coinage, as well as a universal system of weights and measures; the other, by those who are aware of the present and increasing deterioration of the gold coinage of the country, arising from the number of coins deficient in full weight which are now in circulation.

Neither of these points have escaped the notice of the active mind of the present Chancellor of the Exchequer (Right Hon. R. Lowe). He has become aware that many of the gold coins now in circulation are below the legal tender weight; that the opportunity of a considerable re-coinage might be made use of to assimilate the weight of gold in the sovereign to that contained in twenty-five francs, and that in doing this the expense incurred in the coinage of gold might, by means of a seigniorage, be spared to the country.

To explain these points, it will be well, in the first place, to refer to a report of the then Master of the Mint, and Colonel Smith, late Master of the Calcutta Mint, in reply to the question put by the Chancellor of the Exchequer--

'What would it cost, first to manufacture a sovereign, and afterwards to keep it in good condition for all time? The coin is always losing weight by wear, while it passes from hand to hand, and ends by becoming light (after three-quarters of a grain of gold have been lost), and is no longer current. The individual piece has thus a limited existence, and must be withdrawn and replaced by a new sovereign of full weight; that, again, by another in due time; and so on. Now, for what present payment could this succession be maintained? What is the contract price to cover the first construction, and all future restoration?'[3]

To put it in another shape. The person who thinks it worth his while to convert his gold bullion into coin, according to this plan, is to pay for the expense of manufacture, and is also called upon to contribute to a reserve fund, by means of which the natural deterioration of the coin he has caused to be put into circulation is to be provided for.

The coinage of gold in this country is--and it is well to explain this point at the outset--entirely gratuitous as far as the Government is concerned. That is to say, any person possessing gold bullion of the required purity of standard, may, if he chooses, take that bullion to the Mint. And, in due time, the officers of the Mint will return him--weight for weight--an equal quantity of gold coin. In due time, however, means in practice, a considerable delay; and delay in money matters means loss of interest. Hence, it arises, that in the natural course of events, no private person takes gold bullion to be coined, himself. But he carries it to the Bank of England. Now, that great corporation, among other duties to the State, has this particular charge. It is bound to buy all gold bullion of standard fineness offered to it, at the rate of £3 17s. 9d. per oz. These payments are made in bank notes; and as bank notes are immediately exchangeable for sovereigns, the result is, that any one possessing gold bullion of the Mint standard, can at once and immediately turn that bullion into gold coins for the slight cost of 1½d. per oz., or something less than ½d. for every sovereign. This is really buying a sovereign at cost price, for the mere manufacture of a sovereign costs fully a ½d., as will be mentioned further on. What is more, the payment, small as it is, does not accrue to the Government, but is retained by the Bank of England, and is considered as being only sufficient to compensate that institution for the trouble and expense of the operation, including the loss of time, and consequent loss of interest incurred. No provision is made to include the loss by wear, which, though imperceptible at the moment, accumulates in process of time to a large amount. Investigation shows that 100 sovereigns lose 8d. a year by fair usage. If the amount of British gold coin in circulation amounts, as it is supposed to do, to eighty millions, sixty-eight being whole sovereigns, and twelve millions in halves, the annual loss would amount to £35,000 from deterioration due to wear alone. The charge for manufacturing sovereigns is not high when all that has to be done is taken into consideration. Great precautions have to be taken in the process to secure the needful quality. Each bar has to be brought to the required standard. Careful assays are made, and great exactness in the weight of each coin is, of course, essential. All these points cannot be attended to without considerable expense. Again, the great amount of valuable property in the shape of coin and bullion necessitates vigilant watching. The total charge is estimated at ½d. each sovereign. Half sovereigns are, in proportion to value, more expensive to strike than sovereigns. They also wear more rapidly. This arises from greater rapidity of circulation, and also from the fact that, weight for weight, each half sovereign presents a greater surface for abrasion than a sovereign. After making careful calculations, the Master of the Mint and Colonel Smith arrived at the conclusion that a charge of £1 13s. 6d. for every £100 coined would be sufficient to cover all expenses. That is to say, that if an arrangement were made with a contractor to undertake to manage the Mint, and to keep the gold coinage in good repair, he would require, to hold him harmless from loss, to be paid about £1 13s. 6d. for every £100 in the average proportion of sovereigns and half sovereigns put into circulation. And this sum is at the present time lost to the community.

It is characteristic of the manner in which public questions are handled in this country, that throughout the report, to which is attached the name of an official in such high place as that of the late Master of the Mint, continual reference is made to the investigations, not of a public officer, but of Mr. Jevons, Professor of Political Economy in Owen's College, Manchester. Mr. Jevons, being desirous of ascertaining the condition of the gold currency, made inquiries of bankers and other suitable persons in all parts of the United Kingdom, requesting them

'to take one or two hundred pounds in sovereigns, and half the amount in half-sovereigns, from gold received in the ordinary course of business, and to cause the number of coins of each date to be counted and stated. The aid thus requested was furnished with a readiness which I had no right to expect, and which I cannot sufficiently acknowledge. Not a few gentlemen, on becoming acquainted with my purpose, procured very extensive returns, and the final result was, that this kind of census of the gold coinage was extended over one-sixth of a million of coins, thus composed:

Number of sovereigns enumerated 90,474 Number of half-sovereigns enumerated 75,036 ------ Total number 165,510

'At least one gold coin in every hundred now existing in this country was, on the average, enumerated; and, as there were 321 separate returns received from 213 distinct towns or localities, including almost every place of commercial importance, it may be allowed, I think, that sufficient data were acquired for determining the average character of the circulation.'--Journal of the Statistical Society, vol. xxxi., p. 439.

Mr. Jevons' inquiry was, as he describes it, made in a private manner, but it was, beyond question, conducted most efficiently and thoroughly. And there is no reason to doubt that he has rather under-estimated than over-estimated the case when he states, that about 45 per cent. of the sovereigns and 62 per cent. of the half-sovereigns now in circulation in the country are lighter than the legal standard. If this statement appears excessive to any one, he can easily verify it for himself. He has only to go to his banker, in whatever part of the United Kingdom he may reside, and ask him to provide out of the gold in his till--out of the ordinary circulation of the locality--100 sovereigns of full weight. Then, if he inquires how many sovereigns have been picked over to obtain this number, he will--within those reasonable limits of variation which every similar calculation is liable to--find that Mr. Jevons' statement gives a correct idea of the ordinary circulation.

But Mr. Lowe, as will have been observed, did not confine himself to the actual deterioration of the existing British gold circulation. His thoughts took a wider range--'a coin which would have the advantage of an international circulation' occurred to him as a possible thing--and, further, that the British sovereign, reduced to an exact equation with twenty-five francs of gold coin of France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, &c., might be such a coin. The question of the desirability of an international coinage has frequently been discussed. From some of the remarks which have been made on Mr. Lowe's speech, it might have been imagined to be only a recent idea. But this is far from being the case. Much attention was drawn to the point in 1851. The difficulty then experienced in comparing the value of the articles produced in different countries and shown at the Great Exhibition, naturally suggested the idea of a coinage common to all nations. The International Statistical Congress then took the matter up at their meetings at Brussels, in 1853, and at Paris, in 1855, and at London, in 1860. This last-named meeting was held under the presidency of the late Prince Consort, and his address on its opening was the last public speech delivered by him. In it are to be found these words, which show that the importance of the question of international coinage had not escaped the notice of the Prince:--'The different weights, measures, and currencies, in which different statistics are expressed, cause further difficulties and impediments. Suggestions with regard to the removal of these have been made at former meetings, and will, no doubt, be renewed.' Before this meeting separated, an international commission was formed to report on the question. Further consideration was given to it at Berlin, in 1863. In December, 1865, the idea was put into practice. A formal convention was entered into by France, Belgium, Italy, and Switzerland; and those four countries established an international currency among themselves. The French Government followed up the subject by giving official notice of this convention, inviting this country, with many others, to send commissioners to attend a conference 'for the purpose of deliberating upon the best means of securing a common basis for the adoption of a general international coinage.'

'The Conference was attended by thirty-three delegates, representing twenty different countries, viz.:--Austria, Baden, Bavaria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Prussia, Russia, Spain, Sweden and Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, United States, Wurtemburg.'

'The delegates were not authorized in any way to bind their respective countries, but they voted according to their own opinions.'

* * * * *

'Great value seems to be attached to the cooperation of England in any measure of this description. England has been forward in urging the policy of free trade upon Continental nations; and while her joining in any movement originated abroad for promoting and facilitating commercial intercourse would be most favourably received, and would increase her influence among them, her declining altogether to enter upon it might appear to be inconsistent with her general conduct upon such questions.'

'The recommendations of the Conference may be shortly stated to be:

'I. The adoption of a single gold standard.

'II. The adoption of 9/10 as the proportion of fine gold in the coins.

'III. That all gold coins hereafter struck in any of the countries which are parties to the Convention, should be either of the value of five francs or multiples of that sum.

'IV. That a gold coin of the value of twenty-five francs should be struck by such countries as prefer it, and be admitted as an international coin.

'In other countries steps have been taken with a view to promote a general international coinage.

* * * * *

'A Bill has been introduced into the Congress of the United States for altering the value of the American coinage, so as to assimilate it to that of the Convention of 1865; and we have received the report of the Finance Committee of the Senate of the United States, recommending the adoption of the measure, with certain amendments; together with a report also presented to the Senate, adverse to the passing of the Bill.

'A Bill has been introduced into the Canadian Parliament for the regulation of the currency of that country, in which provision is made for the adoption by Canada of the system of the Convention, in the event of the measure above referred to becoming law in the United States.

'Another Bill has been introduced into the Congress of the United States, in order to assimilate the coinage to that of this country, making the half eagle equal to our sovereign.

'The Federal Parliament of the North German Confederation has passed a resolution declaring necessary the adoption of a decimal monetary system.

'Finally, we have received a communication from the Foreign Office, by which it appears that the Government of Sweden have proposed to strike a gold coin equivalent to ten francs, and further to coin pieces of twenty-five francs as soon as such a coin shall be struck in France.'--Report from the Royal Commission on International Coinage, 1868.

The Spanish Government has recently given notice of being willing to join the Convention (Nov., 1869), and the pattern pieces of the twenty-five franc coin have already been struck at the Paris mint.

This brief résumé of what has actually been done by several other nations, suffices of itself to show that the question deserves, as Mr. Lowe has stated in Parliament, very careful consideration.

Four nations, with more than sixty-six millions of inhabitants, already possess an international coinage. That is to say, any merchant in the furthest point to which the Convention extends knows at once, if he takes up a paper with the prices current at Paris, Marseilles, Bordeaux, or any of the great centres of commerce, what those prices mean, and how nearly they correspond with his own. Other nations besides France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, are prepared to join in this uniform coinage. It is not unlikely that the sixty-six millions may be more than doubled shortly. Will it not be a great disadvantage to the thirty or thirty-two millions inhabiting these islands to be outside this great confederation?

The values of the gold in the pound sterling and in twenty-five francs approximate very closely. To enable this country to join the confederation, it would be needful for the values to be equalized. This must be done in one of two ways.

Either the amount of gold contained in the proposed coin of twenty-five francs must be increased by twenty centimes to make it the equivalent of the English full-weight sovereign. Or, the weight of gold in the English sovereign must be diminished to make it equal to that contained in the 25-franc piece. The Royal Commissioners on International Coinage appear to have entertained an aspiration--it can hardly be termed a hope--that the former plan would be adopted; but it can scarcely be looked for. The inconvenience to the nations who have already joined the Convention would be so great as to preclude the idea. The other alternative alone practically has to be considered. It amounts to this: that 2d. in value should be taken out of every sovereign. But to do this without due compensation would be to alter every existing contract. A seigniorage to be charged on all bullion taken to the mint to be coined, is proposed as a method of bridging over this difficulty. To effect this such a charge or seigniorage would have to be proportionate to the amount of bullion subtracted from each sovereign.

It is desirable to trace out what effect such a charge would have. It would be--

'tantamount to an enhancement of the purchasing value of the coinage in the country of its currency. It immediately augments the value of the coinage as expressed in its exchange value for bullion, unless the weight of pure metal in the coinage be simultaneously reduced to the same extent as the amount of the seigniorage. The following may serve as a test example, and avoid the necessity for the use of fractions:--"What would be the effect of a seigniorage of 1 per cent, in a country where it is imposed for the first time?" It would be this: that whilst the pieces of current coin before the imposition of the seigniorage were exactly worth their weight in uncoined bullion of the same intrinsic fineness, they would, after its imposition, be worth 1 per cent, more than their weight in bullion of the like standard.'--Mr. Hendriks' Evidence, Royal Commission on International Coinage, p. 142.

The sovereign, thus diminished in weight, would still possess exactly the same purchasing power--within the limits of the country--as it previously had. Beyond those limits, as shown by the practice of the French mint authorities, it would still retain its value. It would not be, as the present sovereign now is, undervalued in consequence of the mint charges of other nations.

An objection may be, and has already been, made to the alteration--that such a change would be unfair to all those creditors who had made contracts in the old coin, and would be repaid in the new. This objection is sufficiently disposed of by the fact that, as mentioned before, the purchasing power of the new coin will be equal to that of the old.

If any doubt existed, a further security might be given under all circumstances, by adopting the plan recommended by Colonel Smith, the late Master of the Calcutta Mint. His proposal is, 'that the new sovereign shall be changeable for gold bullion at the present price.' This would cause the value of the new coin to remain equal with that of the present coin, exactly as the value of the existing silver coinage is maintained. The present shilling, even when of full weight, is by no means worth its weight in the metal of which it is made. The pound troy of standard silver is, and has been in England, since 1817, coined into sixty-six shillings. The value of the shilling, thus debased, is maintained at the proper level by the coin being limited, as a legal tender, to 42s. by tale. The result is obvious. Silver of the value of something like 18s. does service for 20s. What is more, this has been the case for years, and no one has ever been injured by it. And the same effect would surely follow if Colonel Smith's plan were carried out. If the holder of 100 sovereigns were to desire to convert them into gold, he would take them to the Bank of England, who would give, as now, a certain quantity of bar gold of standard fineness, at £3 17s. 10½d. per oz. The sovereign would, to a certain extent, become a 'token' coin; that is to say, each sovereign would, as the shilling is now, be worth something less than the stamped value. But it would, within the limits of the convention, that is, within the limits of the civilized world, be current exactly to the extent of its nominal value; and any one desiring to employ it beyond the limits of the Convention would be placed in exactly the position in which he is now, by simply taking his gold coins to the Bank of England and exchanging them for bar gold. A further advantage would arise from this diminution in weight of the sovereign. As the sovereign is worth a fraction over ten rupees in India, it follows that the internationalization of the English sovereign, and the reducing it by about twopence, to make it equal with twenty-five francs or five dollars, would immediately rectify the present difference between the British sovereign and the 10-rupee piece; and the rupee, the British florin, and the Australian florin would, in the international scheme of coinage, ultimately become absolutely identical, so far at least as gold coinage is concerned.[4]

Any alteration of coin in so backward a country as India would have to be introduced with great caution; but the advantage of assimilating the currency to that of this country cannot be doubted. There are great disadvantages in allowing coins, nearly identical in value, to circulate together; and if the 'sovereign' remains at the present value, what Mr. Jevons anticipates may not be unlikely to happen.

'It is only necessary for the Continental nations and the United States to issue, as is already proposed, a piece of twenty-five francs in order to supplant the sovereign; for, as the new coin would have the value of a well-worn sovereign, it would soon be accepted equally with the sovereign in all foreign countries and our colonies, if not at home. At the same time, the difference of value being about 2d. in the pound, would ensure the melting of all new sovereigns in preference. Thus, however many sovereigns are coined, we should never succeed in dislodging the 25-franc piece from circulation. More even than at present our British Mints would perform the labours of the Danaïdes, ever pouring forth new and beautiful coin, at once to disappear into the bullion dealer's crucible. The sovereign would be an evanescent coin, constantly liable to be recoined with the permanent impress of a foreign mint. Common sense, as well as invariable experience, tells us that we must be worsted in this contest of the heavier and the lighter coin.'--Professor Jevons' Paper in the Journal of the Statistical Society, vol. xxxi., p. 429.

The extent of the populations employing the 20-franc piece as their principal gold coin, has already been mentioned. Some persons may say, 'It is true these nations more than double in number the persons whose basis of accounts is the pound sterling; but still there may be more "sovereigns" in existence than 20-franc pieces.' Now, it is by no means as easy to enumerate the coins in a country as to make a census of the inhabitants. You may count the dwellers in the poorest hovel. But you cannot count the coins hidden under the hearth, or in the end of the stocking. It is, however, by no means clear that the amount of British gold coin in existence is as much as that circulated by several other nations. Sovereigns, so far from preponderating, appear to be in an absolute minority. At the Paris Conference of 1867, the amounts of the gold coinage of Great Britain, France, and the United States were stated as follows:--

France, from 1793 to 1866, of the value of £262,444,160 Great Britain, 1816 to 1866 187,068,290 United States, 1792 to 1866 169,107,318[5]

It is, of course, impossible to state with certainty what proportion of coins struck at any mint at any time remain in existence afterwards. Some coins are called in, some are lost, others find their way to the melting-pot: it is impossible to say how many continue to circulate. One thing, however, is certain, that whatever casualties of this nature any coins are exposed to, British coins feel to the fullest extent. The rapidity of circulation in Great Britain tends to great deterioration from wear and tear. The absence of seigniorage causes our coinage to be relatively undervalued in proportion to other gold coins.[6] Even supposing British coins to remain current as long as those of other nations, they are certainly less numerous. They are probably far less frequently hoarded. The coinage returns from 1851 to 1866 inclusive show the relative proportions even more clearly than the earlier statements. Our Mint was less fertile during that time, than either the Mints of France or the United States.

YEARS 1851 TO 1866. Great Britain struck in gold coins £91,000,000 The United States 131,600,000 France 197,400,000 ----------- 420,000,000

The amount of gold coin in a country is very far from being an indication, either of its wealth or of its business transactions; but these figures suffice to show that the sovereign does not hold the pre-eminence frequently ascribed to it. Even if the proceeds of the Sydney Mint are added in, the sovereign will still be found in the minority. The Sydney Mint was established in 1855. The coinage has been as follows:--

Average Years. Coinage. per annum. 7 years 1855 to 1861 £ 8,438,162 £1,205,451 5 " 1862 to 1866 11,889,838 2,377,967 ----------- £20,328,000

And it must not be assumed that all these Australian sovereigns are in circulation now. An imperfection in the process of refining incident on carrying on that operation in a new country, left a certain portion of silver at all events in the earlier mintages, and this circumstance is believed to have made these coins favourites with the 'melters.' Sir A. Donaldson, formerly Colonial Secretary, and Colonial Treasurer to the Government of New South Wales, gave evidence before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Sydney Branch Mint, appointed in 1862; and, after stating that he believed that a considerable number of the Australian sovereigns have reached England, added, 'as a matter of fact, I think they all find their way to the refiner.' Mr. W. Miller, of the Bank of England, when examined before the same Committee, 'understood that upwards of 2,000,000 were sent to this country some time ago, and that they have been melted.' This was before the proclamation making these coins legal tender in this country. They have probably been less frequently melted since that proclamation. But it cannot be assumed that the whole twenty millions are still in circulation. Even including all of them, the sovereign would not be the preponderating coin as far as number is concerned.

Mr. Hendriks, a very eminent statistician, who has paid much attention to questions connected with the coinage (vide Journal of the Society of Arts, February 14, 1868), has given to the public the grounds upon which he bases his opinion that, although the sovereign and the dollar may be more widely diffused than the Napoleon, there are now current in the world twice as many Napoleons as sovereigns, four times as many as half-eagle or five-dollar pieces, and about one-third more than sovereigns and half-eagle pieces together. This writer has also made the following calculations, showing the relative importance of the United States, England, and France, as the chief manufacturing countries of coinage since 1792. The object of the division of the results into separate periods is to show the altered condition since the gold discoveries in California and Australia.

PERCENTAGE OF THE COINAGE OF THE THREE NATIONS TO THEIR TOTAL COINAGE.

Years Years Years 1792 to 1851. 1861 to 1866. 1792 to 1866 United States 18⅓ 31½ 27⅓ England 48⅔ 21½ 30⅓ France 33 47 42⅓ ------ ------ ------ 100 100 100

In further commenting, in the pages of the Economist, on these statistics, Mr. Hendriks observes:--

'It thus appears that whilst England coined 48⅔ per cent., or nearly one-half, of the grand total from 1792 to 1851, her proportion has fallen from the first place to the last, in the subsequent period 1851 to 1866, her fresh coinage having therein sunk to 21½ per cent., or a little more than one-fifth of the total. The proportion for France was 33 per cent. in the first period, and 47 per cent. in the second. From the second place she thus moved to the first. But the advance of the United States was equally marked, and from the smallest proportion, 18⅓ per cent, in the period 1792 to 1851, there was an increase to 31½ per cent., or to the second place, in the period 1851 to 1866.

'The report from the Secretary of the American Treasury for 1868 gives more recent statistics, namely, for the years ended 30th June, 1867 and 1868. These show a gold coinage of about forty million dollars in 1867, and of about twenty-four million dollars in 1868. But in England, in 1867, the gold coined was actually less than half a million sterling, or under two and a half million dollars' worth in American coin. And in 1868 the English Mint turned out only £1,653,384 sterling, or about eight million dollars' worth in American coin. The gold coinage of France has also declined below the rate of fresh production in America. Thus America is rapidly attaining the first place as a gold coining country. And it will be a question for future time to solve, whether the English and Australian Mints, in their united working, will exceed the manufacture by the United States' Mints at Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Denver.'

As some persons may say, 'Other nations need a larger gold coinage than we do, because their paper money and banking systems are not like ours; but their coinage is no proof of the extent of their business transactions,' it is best to mention that the united export and import trade of the European countries alone, who have already joined the Monetary Convention, or have signed preliminary treaties of adherence thereto, amounts to no less than five hundred million pounds sterling per annum at the present time, or to nearly one-fourth more than the aggregate exports and imports of the United Kingdom. It will now be desirable to mention the charges made for coining, or seigniorage, at the principal mints. In England no charge is made; but the 1½d paid to the Bank on each ounce of standard gold bullion, amounts to about 0·1605 (say 3s. 2½d.) per cent. In France it is different. When gold is carried to the mint there, coin is returned for it, with a certain deduction. This deduction is about ¼ per cent. Beyond this there is some delay, practically, before the coin is returned. On an average the loss of interest on the money, caused by this delay, amounts to about ¾ per cent. Altogether, the charge is about 1 per cent., or more than six times the charge now made in England. In Prussia the charge is ½ per cent., and the delay is about the same as in Paris. In America and India it is about the same.[7]

It appears from these statements that there is nearly a universal consensus of practice in charging a seigniorage. There is also a nearly universal consensus of opinion on the part of the leading authorities in political economy (such as Adam Smith and J. S. Mill) that such a seigniorage, when moderate, really enhances the value of the coin to the extent of the charge. If, therefore, this opinion is correct, it follows that the gold coinage of England, where no charge is made, will be depreciated--that is, will not obtain its real value in those countries where a charge is made. It is not difficult to show that this is the case in France; and if in one country where a seigniorage is charged, it follows, of course, in all of them.

A British sovereign of full weight contains about equal intrinsic quantities of pure gold with twenty-five francs twenty centimes.

'But it does not follow that even a full-weight sovereign is more valuable, either in a mathematical or in a commercial sense, than twenty-five francs of gold coin, when it is conveyed to a country within the operation of the Monetary Convention of December, 1865. There the sovereign ceases to be coin, and is nothing more than bullion; and, as bullion, is subject to a seigniorage or mint-charge, when converted into coin. And as, in the countries in question, twenty-five francs twenty centimes of bullion are, on the average, equal to only twenty-five francs of coin, the sovereign is practically "valuable" only as twenty-five francs.'--Royal Commission on International Coinage. Evidence of Mr. Hendriks, p. 145.

The reason for this must be that the British coinage is gratuitous. A sovereign may be regarded from two points of view--as a certain weight of gold of a known fineness, manufactured into a uniform shape by the officials of the mint, and as the current coin of the realm. At present no charge is made for the process of manufacture. The question to be decided is this, Is the coin, plus the process of manufacture, worth more than the same weight of gold before that process is performed? It appears that it is even worth less in France.

'The French Mint publishes a tariff giving a schedule of the coinage of each country, the legal weight and fineness in the country of its mintage, and a comparative estimate of fineness, according to the French Mint tariff of purchase, stating the value of each coin per kilogramme and per single piece.'

If the intrinsic value of the pure gold contained in the sovereign is considered, it is equal to 25·2079 at par; but the Mint tariff giving the price of purchase makes it only 25·12 at par, a deduction of about nine centimes on each sovereign. In estimating it thus,

'The French Mint Commission and M. Durand, its Commissioner-General, practically admit that current gold coin in France is equal in exchange to its full legal weight of bullion, plus seigniorage. In order to test this with mathematical exactness, we must observe that a kilogramme, i.e., 1,000 grammes of absolutely pure gold without deduction for seigniorage or mint charges, is worth 3444·4444 francs; or, with deduction at the rate of 6 francs 70 centimes, on 3,100 francs, 9/10 fine, the 1,000 grammes of absolutely pure gold, 10/10 fine, are worth 3,437 francs. Then, at ·916 fine, i.e., at the French Mint tariff of English gold coin treated as bullion, the proportionate value of the kilogramme of sovereigns, allowing for seigniorage or mint charge, comes out as given in the tariff, 3148·29 francs. And thus, doubtless, the French Mint arrives at its present equation of 25·12 francs = 1 sovereign. For the proportion is, 1,000 grammes : 3148·29 francs :: 7·98085 grammes : x = 25·12602 francs.'--Royal Commission on International Coinage. Mr. Hendriks' Evidence, p. 146.

It appears by this that the pound sterling is practically undervalued 2d. in France; one penny about in the intrinsic worth of the gold; and another, the cost of coining the metal, including the loss for delay in so doing.

Any alteration in the standard of the coinage is, beyond doubt, a measure which should not be carelessly undertaken. Those opposed to such a measure have stated that the standard had remained unchanged in this country for more than a century and a half. Great weight has also been attributed by some persons to the resolution of the House of Commons of 20th October, 1696, and passed again in the same words on the 12th June, 1822, 'That this House will not alter the standard of the gold and silver coins of this kingdom, in fineness, weight, or denomination.' A solemn declaration beyond doubt; but notwithstanding this, several changes have at various times been made in the currency of the realm.

In 1696, the year of the 'Resolution' silver was the sole legal tender.

In 1717, silver ceased to be the sole standard, and the double, or alternative standard of gold or silver, was adopted. This change was made under the advice of Sir Isaac Newton.

In 1774, silver was restricted, as a legal tender, to sums under £25 by tale, and above £25 by weight, but gold remained a legal tender without restriction.

In 1783, both gold and silver, without any restriction, became legal tender.

In 1797, bank notes were made legal tender. The effect of this change is well known.

In 1798, silver was made legal tender as in 1774.

In 1817, gold alone was made legal tender, silver being debased and restricted as mentioned before.

In the face of these alterations it is impossible to appeal to history for a proof that it is not lawful to make any desirable change.

But some objectors say, If the British Mint no longer coins gratis, gold bullion will no longer make its way to this country as freely as it now does. At the present time England is the great bullion exchange of the world, because it is the country where the mint charges are lowest. Deprive this country of this advantage, and the stream of bullion will be directed elsewhere. If this argument is of any validity, of course all, or at least the greater part, of the bullion which has already reached this country, must have found its way to the Mint. But what is the real fact? That not so much as the ninth part of the gold bullion imported into this country within the last four years, has been coined into British money.

The following figures are taken from the Statistical Abstract for 1869:--

COMPUTED REAL VALUE OF THE REGISTERED IMPORTS OF GOLD AND SILVER BULLION, AND SPECIE, INTO THE UNITED KINGDOM. Gold. Silver. Total. 1865 £14,485,570 £6,976,641 £21,462,211 1866 23,509,641 10,777,498 34,287,139 1867 15,800,159 8,020,888 23,821,047 1868 17,136,177 7,716,418 24,852,595 _____________ £104,422,992

AMOUNT OF GOLD AND SILVER MONEYS COINED AT THE ROYAL MINT. Gold. Silver. Total.

1865 £2,367,614 £501,732 £2,869,346 1866 5,076,676 493,416 5,570,092 1867 496,397 193,842 690,239 1868 1,653,384 301,356 1,954,740 ___________ £11,084,417

Looking at these figures, it will scarcely be argued that the fact of gratuitous coinage at the Royal Mint is of any power in attracting gold bullion to this country.

The charges made on coining in other countries amount to large sums in the aggregate. It is desirable to show what these sums are.

It has been calculated that, upon each million pounds sterling worth of gold coin delivered, the charge (including adjustment for loss of interest in the fixed delays for delivery) amounts in all

England to £ 1,605 France 10,490 United States 15,000 Australia 13,330 India 13,330[8]

It is of itself a sufficient answer to those who think that the imposition of a seigniorage might prevent bullion from being brought to this country for coinage, to note what has taken place where such a charge is made. Both France and the United States have coined considerably more gold during the sixteen years mentioned above than this country. Yet the charge in the United States is nearly ten times that in Great Britain. The coinage at the Mint of Sydney has nearly doubled, yet the charge in Sydney is nearly as high as in the United States. The returns for the years 1867-1868 have not, as far as we are aware, yet reached this country. But considering the great and progressive increase in the Sydney coinages, it is highly probable that the coins struck in Australia during those years have greatly exceeded those minted in London.

To sum up:

It is at present open to this country to join the International Monetary Convention already in force between several of the principal European States.

It is probable that this Convention will shortly include the most important powers of the civilized world.

The population of the countries which have already given in their adherence to this Convention, greatly exceed in number the inhabitants of the British Islands. Their trade is more important in value than our own.

The disadvantages of being outside such a Convention are very great.

In joining it, a seigniorage would have to be charged on all British gold coinages.

A similar seigniorage is always charged on the coinages at the Sydney Mint; and the coinage at the Sydney Mint is now large and increasing--in the last two years probably more than that of the English Mint.

This seigniorage is no disadvantage to anyone. On the contrary, it possesses several advantages. At present, the last holder of a light sovereign is exposed to loss. This is unfair, as probably the last holder has done nothing to cause the coin to be light.

Were a seigniorage imposed, the first holder, the man who thinks he can gain something by causing the coin to be minted, would have--as is fair--to provide against the depreciation. Further, the first holder would have to pay for the work he has done; i.e., the manufacture of the coin--a charge now defrayed by the country.

It is clear that the absence of a seigniorage is not the cause which attracts gold to England, as barely the ninth part of the bullion imported finds its way to the Mint.

It is also clear that alterations, one at least of far more importance than the imposition of a seigniorage, have at former times been made in the status of the currency of the country.

To conclude, in the words of an early pioneer of British commerce, 'The exchanges practised in England, and principally in London, are confined within a narrow scantling, being but as a rivolet issuing out of the great streame of those exchanges that are used beyond the seas.'

Thus wrote 'that eminently deserving author,' Mr. Lewes Roberts, the 'delineator' of the Merchant's Mappe of Commerce in 1638. The 'true dimensions of our English traffique' even then excited his limited admiration and wonder. He could only imagine either that this commerce was 'at its full perfection, or that it aymes higher than can hitherto, by my weake sight, be either seen or discerned.' To us, 'the full streame' of that trade seems but 'a petty rivolet,' and we only wonder how, with the complicated and varying systems of money then in practice, with measures of length and quantity differing in almost every place of importance in Europe, any commerce could be kept up between differing nations. It is no longer needful to note now, as it was then, that different weights and measures were to be found in the principal cities even of the same country. It is no longer needful to bear in mind, as it was then, that there was a difference of exchange between places close to each other, and within the same territories. Commerce now would not bear such fetters. The vigour of the early days of trade surmounted those obstacles as the rush of a mountain stream drives it unhindered over rocks that vainly bar its course. In these times affairs approach what has been termed the stationary state. As the stream expands, the current becomes more gentle. As facilities for trade become greater, a smaller obstacle suffices to turn that trade from its course. It is now far more easy to give a vessel the option of discharging her cargo in one port or another, in one country or another, than it was then. Increased opportunities of intercourse render any change of the line of traffic far less difficult now than at any previous time. A smaller difference in profit renders such alterations of destination more desirable and more necessary. The course of commerce has just been compared to that of a stream--as dashing rapidly down the mountain glen, or slowly moving through the rich and level plain. Is it permissible to carry on the simile still further?--to watch how, as in Holland, a trifling artificially-produced change of level is sufficient to divert the scarcely perceptible flow of the almost stagnant flood--to add the waters of the Rhine to the Yssel, or of the Waal to the Lech? So as a general extension of wealth brings all countries more closely to one uniform condition, is it not needful to remove those obstacles which may cause similar diversions of our trade? Is it not needful to take a step onward, and to supply our own people with those advantages which are now possessed by many--will soon be possessed by almost all civilized nations? Among such advantages, to provide a coinage which, while entailing no expense on the country, either at its creation or for its maintenance, may be truly international in character, and aid the streams of our commerce to maintain their course around the globe.

ART. III.--(1.) Diaries and Correspondence of James Harris, first Earl of Malmesbury. Edited by his Grandson, the Third Earl. 4 vols. Second edition. London: 1845.

(2.) Letters of the first Earl of Malmesbury, his Family, and Friends, from 1745 to 1820. Edited, with Notes, &c., by his Grandson, the Right Hon. the EARL OF MALMESBURY, G.C.B. 2 vols. London: 1870.

From 1745 to 1820--this was the lifetime of James Harris, afterwards first Earl of Malmesbury; and such is the period over which the subject-matter of these two works extends. A more memorable period is not to be found in the annals of this country, or even in the long and more momentous history of Europe. It bridges the chasm which separates the old world of Europe from the new. It shows us that elder world in its last stage; it also shows us the beginning of that new and better order of things amongst which we now live. In the earlier period of those seventy-five years, we see the thrones of Louis the Fifteenth, of Frederick the Great, and Catherine of Russia, standing high above the heads of a crushed and miserable people, who counted for nothing either in their policy or in their pleasures. The simple facts of that old régime of royal absolutism now read like a monstrous dream. Vice and despotism in the palace, license and intrigue at the Court, penury in the cottage, and degradation everywhere, such is hardly an exaggeration of the general condition of the Continent at that time, and simple truth as regards France, who then, as since, boasted her leadership of civilization. As is always the case in analogous periods, the people themselves had sunk into a moral torpor. There were no national movements or aspirations. Religion, freedom, and the thirst for military conquest, are the three great motive powers of humanity. But all of these were then dead or in abeyance. Humanity had settled on its lees. Even mental philosophy, which so often flourishes in such dead times of a nation's history, threw its teachings into the scale in favour of an ignoble life; and while a pitiless Scepticism robbed men of heaven and all their religious beliefs, Materialism bade them "eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow ye die" for ever, like the trees of the wood and the beasts of the fields. While Philosophy robbed man of his moral freedom and a future life, Royalty denied him his personal and political liberty and plundered his pockets. In truth, the whole upper crust of society had become heartless, debased, and corrupt, while beneath was a seething mass of suffering, ignorance, and savagery. And so the upper crust, with king, priests, and nobles--crowns, croziers, and coronets--gave way and fell into an abyss of devouring fire, like that which burst up of yore beneath Sodom and Gomorrah, devastating the corrupt Cities of the Plain. The old world of Europe was cast into the furnace, and all things became new--Providence overruling the wrath of man to its own wise and merciful ends.

All history is an ennobling study, alike in its events and its examples; but life is short, and it is the French Revolution that commences the period of history of deepest importance to the present age. Beyond that chasm, so rudely severing the old world of Europe from the new, lies the realm of the historian; on this side begins a drama of opinions and events constituting by far the most useful field of study in secular and political knowledge. Changed since then, and still changing, as are the territorial arrangements of Europe, the conquests of Napoleon contributed greatly to the rise of the principle of Nationality which is now the great power at work in the alteration of boundaries and the shaping of kingdoms. It is true, Napoleon meant to conquer only for himself and for France. He sought to found a vast empire, with vassal kingdoms under the rule of his brothers and relatives. But in establishing this empire, he swept away a great deal of the obstructive rubbish of the former time. By expelling the Germans from Italy, and also by creating a titular King of Rome, he paved the way for the subsequent aspirations and movement of the Italians in favour of nationality and independence, which have at length borne their full fruits in the establishment of a free and united Italy. In like manner, by sweeping away a whole host of petty princedoms in Germany, he simplified the subsequent course of events towards a unification of Germany; while the iron despotism which he exercised in that country first compelled all Germans to feel the tie of brotherhood, in the glorious uprising of the Fatherland in 1813 against the foreign foe. Poland, too, during the ascendancy of Napoleon, temporarily (but only for the great conqueror's own purposes) regained in part its old existence, thereby keeping alive the hope for renewed independence; a hope which, improbable as our expectations may seem, we think will yet be realized amid the great trouble, and changes impending over the Continent. But still more memorable, and worthy of thoughtful study, are the times of the French Revolution, from the influence which they have produced upon the current of political, social, and religious thought, in subsequent times. A whole flood of new ideas, principles, and opinions was then poured upon the world. Some of these were wise and good, others were detestable, but nearly all of them were given to the world in so crude a form and in so savage or ruthless a spirit, as to make them as a whole so repulsive that even yet some of their excellencies are but little known or acknowledged. Every one recognises, however, the vast influence which that grand and terrible Revolution has exercised upon the whole current of subsequent thought; and if Europe has yet to undergo one more great upheaving of democratic revolution (as we believe it has), we may rely upon it that some of the more extreme and, at present, all but forgotten dogmas of the first revolution will again appear on the scene; including, we regret to say, that terrible development of infidelity and materialism, against which even Robespierre himself, with his firm belief in the Supreme Being and a future life, was unable successfully to contend. That storm of blasphemy and utter scepticism, in its worst features at least, soon blew over--and let us trust that such will be the case again; but any one who has watched the turn of thought on the Continent, and in Germany even more than in France, must expect any new outburst of democratic revolution to be accompanied by a manifesto of infidelity and an attempt to banish religion from the fabric and principles of society, in a manner only too similar to that which formed the worst feature of the first French Revolution.

The first Earl of Malmesbury was in public life, for the greater part of the time holding the highest diplomatic appointments abroad, during the whole course of these momentous events. From a vantage-ground enjoyed by few men either of this or any other country, he beheld the Courts and peoples of Europe both before the deluge and after it; and although he withdrew from public office before the termination of the great war with France, he continued to the end to be confidentially consulted by the Ministers of the time. The first of the two works whose titles are prefixed is by far the most valuable and important. All the leading men of the day--monarchs, statesmen, and generals--figure constantly in the diaries and correspondence. The work has been quoted with advantage to history by some of our ablest writers, and not least so by Lord Stanhope, in his 'Life of Pitt.' It constitutes a mine of historical and political facts; and though published too late to be made use of by our chief historians of the French war and of the immediately preceding times of the Empress Catherine and Frederick the Great, its value is fully recognised by the writers of the personal and political memoirs which have recently issued from the press. The second of the works on our list is of a lighter character, in which the incidents of fashionable life mingle largely with matters of State and Parliamentary politics. The one work shows us the grand movements of the time, the other gives us the bye-play. The latter, to which we chiefly confine our remarks, is a selection from private letters received by three generations of the Harris family. They are confidential exchanges of intelligence and ideas, in which the hopes and fears, the expectations, disappointments, and impressions of our ancestors are given in the very words in which they were described. The noble editor of these letters calls them 'waifs of the past,' but they possess a twofold interest, firstly, as illustrating the opinions and social habits of that past time; and secondly, they are reliable indications of what public feeling was at their date with regard to politics, society, and the general condition of our own and foreign countries:--

'And how eventful those years were,' says the editor: 'They saw the Highland rebellion; the American war; the despotic Courts of the Bourbons, of Catherine, and of Frederick; the great French revolution, and its subsequent phases of a bloody republic, an aggressive empire, an ephemeral restoration, and again of a short empire and a second restoration. They witnessed the struggles of our English people for greater freedom, even from the privileges claimed by their own House of Commons; and lastly, a far fiercer contest to save their own country from the subjugation under which for a time Napoleon held every nation in Europe except theirs.'

The chief recipient of the earlier letters in this collection was Mr. James Harris, the father of the first Earl of Malmesbury. The Harris family had lived quietly on an estate in Wiltshire from the middle of the 16th century; and Mr. James Harris first broke through the hereditary sameness of existence by becoming one of the most distinguished scholars of his day. Besides 'Philosophical Treatises,' he published a work on grammar, called 'Hermes,' which the accomplished Bishop Lowth styled 'the most beautiful example of analysis produced since the days of Aristotle,' and which obtained so high a reputation that it was afterwards translated and published by command of the French Directory in 1796. He was member of Parliament for Christchurch, which seat he held till his death, in 1780; was made a Lord of the Treasury in 1763, and in 1744 he became Secretary and Comptroller of the Queen's Household. When he first took his seat in the House of Commons, John Townshend asked who he was, and on being told that he had written on grammar and harmony, replied 'Why does he come here, where he will hear neither?' His literary talent and high personal character procured for Mr. Harris a wide circle of friends and acquaintances among the leading men of the times; and owing to the influence he thus acquired he was enabled to launch his son, afterwards the first Lord, early into public life. The present Earl (who edits these letters), speaking of the 'fêtes and social intercourse in the venerable city of Sarum,' where his great-grandfather resided, observes regretfully 'how much less of cliques and class categories then existed among the nobility and their neighbours than in the present day.'

Mr. Harris was passionately fond of music and art, and wrote treatises upon them, which indicate a more lively and sympathetic nature than would he inferred from the dry philosophy of his other works. His wife moved much in society, and appears to have possessed a similar taste for the fine arts. The best artists of the day were visitors at their house in Salisbury. The family went frequently to the theatre, and in the letters we find critical observations on most of the new dramas of the time. There are two letters from David Garrick, asking permission to bring out at Drury Lane a musical pastoral, called 'Damo and Amyrillis,' which, the editor says, 'was in Mr. Harris's hands,' but which, there seems to us reason to believe, was actually composed by him. As might be expected of a musical family, they attended the concerts and the opera, and by-and-by we read of 'the great house in the Haymarket,' and Italian singers come to the front. Then, as now, the Opera was a perilous venture, and both the managers and singers occasionally came to grief. Of one of the favourite singers of the day we read as follows:--

'All Manzolini's clothes and finery are seized, and carried to the Custom House, so he has sent a petition to the Lords of the Treasury to have them redeemed. This event diverts Lord North, as he says not one of the Treasury know a note of music, nor care one farthing what becomes of Manzolini, except Mr. Harris. He says your father has told so moving a story to Mr. Grenville about it, that he thinks it may affect him.'

A close friendship existed between Mr. Harris and Handel, who left him, by will, his portrait, and all his operas in manuscript. The very first letter in this collection has a touching allusion to the great musician, whose intellect had been affected by his labours, and who had become very eccentric. The Countess of Salisbury, a relative of Mr. Harris, writes to him thus (in 1745):--

'My constancy to poor Handel got the better of my indolence and my propensity to stay at home, and I went last Friday to see the 'Alexander's Feast;' but it was such a melancholy pleasure as drew tears of sorrow, great though unhappy Handel, dejected, wan, and dark, sitting by, not playing on the harpsichord, and to think how his light has been spent by being overplied in music's cause. I was sorry, too, to find the audience so insipid and tasteless (I may add unkind) as not to give the poor man the comfort of applause; but affectation and conceit cannot discern or attend to merit.'

In the next letter, the Rev. W. Harris writes to Mrs. Harris thus:--

'I met Mr. Handel a few days since in the street, and stopped and put him in mind who I was; upon which, I am sure it would have diverted you to have seen his antic motions. He seemed highly pleased, and was full of inquiry after you. I told him I was very confident that you expected a visit from him this summer (at Salisbury). He talked much of his precarious state of health, yet he looks well enough.'

Handel recovered from the mental affection; and five years later (1750) we find the Earl of Shaftesbury writing of him as follows:--

'I have seen Handel several times since I came hither (to London), and I think I never saw him so cool and well. He is quite easy in his behaviour, and has been pleasing himself in the purchase of several fine pictures, particularly a large Rembrandt, which is indeed excellent. We have scarce talked at all about musical subjects, though enough to find that his performances will go off incomparably.'

Music appears to have held a more prominent place in public amusements a century ago than is generally imagined; and when Giardini undertook the management of the Opera 'at the great house in the Haymarket' in 1764, Mrs. Harris opines that he will meet with no small difficulty, because the 'greatest part of the orchestra, and almost all the dancers, are engaged at the play-houses.' Giardini--a Piedmontese violinist and composer, who, after residing thirty years in England, went to Russia, where he died in 1793--came to grief in this operatic venture, and afterwards started an Opera in 'Mrs. Cornely's' rooms. Indeed, the Haymarket house, great as its celebrity became in the present century, was by no means a famous place in those times. In the same year (1764) we read in one of the letters, 'Almack is going to build some most magnificent rooms behind his house--one much larger than that at Carlisle House,' i.e., Mrs. Cornely's. This latter was the favourite place of resort at that time, and for many years afterwards. It was a place where subscription-concerts were held (one series mentioned in 1764, consisted of twenty-one concerts, of Bach's music, Cocchi's, and Abel's, for five guineas), where the Opera for some time had its seat; and also where masquerade parties and other fashionable entertainments were held. In 1770, we read of 'fifteen or sixteen young men of fashion and fortune giving a masquerade at Cornely's, to 800 people;' and in the following year we have a full account of a masquerade given at the same place by 'the gentlemen of the Tuesday Nights' Club.' Mrs. Harris, writing to her son (the future Earl) at Madrid, says: 'Mr. Charles Fox has offered to supply us with tickets. Your sisters and I mean to go; 'tis the only masquerade I wish them to go to. I shall try my utmost to persuade Mr. Harris (her husband) to accompany us. One difficulty is in the way; that is, no gentlemen are admitted in dominos.' Mr. Harris could not be persuaded to join the fashionable assembly, but Mr. Fox--who had just commenced his official career, as a Lord of the Admiralty--was, at that time, more at home in such parties than in Parliament. Mrs. Harris was greatly delighted with it. The following is part of her account of it:--

'Gertrude (Miss Harris) was dressed as the Pythian, that is, priestess to the temple of Apollo, a dress which she wore in one of the private plays. Louisa was an Indian Princess; Mr. Cambridge borrowed a dress for her which was pretty and fine--the habit, muslin with green and gold sprigs, with a turban and veil. I never saw anybody enter so strongly into the spirit of a masquerade as she did. She talked to numbers all in French, and had disguised her voice so well that even some of her friends did not discover her. Towards the end, she said she was frightened by the Devil speaking to her sister. Mine was a white domino, with a Mary Queen of Scots cap and ruff.

'Lord Edgecombe was a shepherdess, with a little lamb under his arm, and a most excellent figure he was. Mr. Banbury was a most excellent friseur; Lord Berkeley, a charlatan. Mrs. Crewe[9] looked beautiful as a nun with a yellow veil. Several gentlemen in women's clothes, not as old women....

'On the whole we are greatly entertained, for it was the first masked ball I ever saw. We supped soon after one; and then everybody unmasked, and a number of acquaintances we found, though we had found out many before. We got home soon after five; and, old as I may be, I never left a public place with more regret.'

Mrs. Cornely's rooms soon became the object of a jealous, and let us hope unfounded, attack. Giardini had opened an Opera there, which was 'greatly injuring that of Mr. Hobart's in the Haymarket;' and the latter gentleman 'informed against them' as an unlicensed house. There was a strong party on either side, 'harmoniacs' and 'anti-harmoniacs,' and the latter party brought forward scandalous charges. Only a week after the above-mentioned masquerade, Mrs. Harris writes thus:--

'The Harmoniac is over, and, what is worse, they threaten hard to indict Mrs. Cornely's as a house of ill-fame, and say that forty beds are made and unmade every day, which is hard, for a friend of ours says it is never more than twenty. But, joking apart, if they choose to demolish Mrs. Cornely, all elegance and spectacle will end in this town; for she never yet had her equal in these things, and I believe got but little, as all she undertakes is clever to a degree.'

There is a wonderful want of logical sequence in these few lines; and as to whether the scandalous charge was true or false, Mrs. Harris apparently was as little in a position to judge as we are now. Mrs. Cornely was originally Mademoiselle Pompeiati, a singer. She hired Carlisle House, in Soho-square, and established balls and assemblies by subscription. This place of fashionable resort, however, as well as its mistress, quickly thereafter declined in reputation. In 1774, we find Mrs. Harris writing:--'I went to Carlysle House, which Bach has taken for his concerts; the furniture, like Mrs. Cornely, is much on the decline; but, in my opinion, the place is better for the concert than Almack's.' Bach soon left these rooms, and opened a place of his own, splendidly fitted up. But even he was not allowed to carry on his performances without opposition, although of a different kind from that which proved fatal to Mrs. Cornely. 'Lord Hillsborough, Sir James Porter, and some others (writes Mrs. Harris) have entered into a subscription to prosecute Bach for a nuisance, and I was told the jury had found a bill against him. One would scarce imagine his house could molest either of these men, for Bach's is at the corner of Hanover-street.'

Amateur theatrical performances were in those days in great vogue among the upper classes, and usually took place in the country residences of the nobility and gentry in the winter months--during the Parliamentary recess, when even members of the Ministry (notably Mr. Fox) took part in them. Winterslow House was the famous place for these amateur performances. The ordinary audience consisted of the servants of the house and the neighbouring townspeople, as well as a select circle of visitors, which on one occasion included the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, the Duchess of Bedford, Lord and Lady Pembroke, Lady Charles and Lord Robert Spencer, Lord Dunkellin, Lady Louisa Fitzpatrick, &c. At the close of one of those performances at Winterslow House (in January, 1774), in which Mr. Fox and another member of his family acted, a lamentable accident occurred, which destroyed the greater part of the mansion. Mrs. Harris writes of it next day as follows:--

'We got home in whole bones [an allusion apparently to the bad roads] soon after one, and in high spirits; but our joy is now turned to sorrow, for this morning, at five, a fire broke out in the new building at Winterslow House, and entirely consumed that and also the old house, except the kitchen and laundry. Though the house was full of company, fortunately no life was lost. The fire was discovered by some Salisbury chairmen, who, for want of a bed, were deposited on a carpet under the great stairs; they alarmed the house, and probably, thereby, saved some lives. Lady Pembroke, Lady Mary Fox and her children, were carried to King's House; Miss Herbert, Mrs. Hodges, and the other ladies stayed in the laundry; all the gentlemen stood by. As they had no engines, and little or no water but violent rain, they in a manner gave up all hopes of the house; but their object was to save the furniture, in which they have succeeded, though 'tis greatly damaged by dirt and rain. 'Tis thought, but not certain, that the fire was owing to some timber near a chimney in the new building. I think of the contrast: we left that house this morning between twelve and one, all mirth and jollity, and by seven it was consumed; it really hurts me when I think how many agreeable days I have spent in those rooms.

'Some say that, during the flames, Stephen and Charles Fox and Fitzpatrick got to a proper distance, and laid bets as to which beam would fall in first. The friends of the house, who resort to Almack's and White's, say they are sorry they were not at Winterslow that night, as "they might have had an opportunity of seeing the family in a new light. I could mention profane things uttered at the very time, but they are too bad."

Amateur dramatic and operatic performances were a frequent amusement at Mr. Harris's house in Salisbury. Miss Gertrude, the elder daughter, was an adept in such performances, and, moreover, retained this taste throughout the whole of her long life. This lady afterwards became the wife of Mr. Robinson, younger son of Lord Grantham. She lived, in the London world, to the age of eighty-five, preserving to the last her faculties and cheerful character. She used to give private theatricals at her house, in which Lord de Grey, Mr. F. Robinson, Hugh Elliott, and Canning were the chief actors--Canning writing the prologues and epilogues, which are still extant. In the letters we find frequent allusions to the performances in Mr. Harris's family residence; but we shall content ourselves with mentioning one of them, which aroused the satirical ire of some provincial Juvenal, whose poetic outburst serves to show the great, indeed too great, change between the notions on such subjects then and now. Mrs. Harris, in a letter to her son, thus alludes to a rehearsal of the piece, which a few days afterwards was performed, as usual, to an audience of the townsfolk and the visitors at the house:--

'I have but little to send from hence; we are so totally taken up with our own theatrical business that nothing else is thought of. The ladies acted last night in their dresses to all their servants, and a most crowded house they had. Although I was not admitted to the performance, I saw all the ladies. Their dresses are fine and elegant. Miss Townshend makes an excellent Spanish ambassador, a fine figure and richly dressed; she had a prodigious long sword, and not being accustomed to wear one, she contrived, as she walked, to run it up through a scene, and damaged it greatly. Louisa has taken a sword you left her [here?], and manages it right well. She is very fine in a purple Spanish dress, all the buttons Irish diamonds, a handsome button and loop to her hat, and your King of Spain's picture hanging from her neck. The Queen, Miss Hussey, was dressed in blue and silver, with a number of diamonds; Miss Wyndham, who is Elvira, in white, trimmed with pearls; Gertrude, the Princess, in a black Spanish dress, trimmed with red and silver, and a great quantity of diamonds; it becomes her much.

'Lord Pembroke [the tenth Earl] sent a note to your father, which was as follows:--"I can snuff candles, I can scrape on the violoncello; if either of these sciences will entitle me to a place in your theatre, I will perform gratis. P.S. My wife says she can thrum the harpsichord or viol-de-gamba."

'We have sent them and the Amesbury House tickets for Saturday. Everybody is making interest to get in. The ladies mean to perform five times, so I hope everybody will see it.'

The satirical verses which this lady performance called forth appeared in the Bath Journal (Nov. 17, 1774), entitled 'On the Ladies at the Close of Salisbury, now acting Elvira;' and Mrs. Harris opines that 'they were sent from some vinegar merchant in Salisbury who could not get admitted to the performance. The verses are as follows:--

'In good Queen Elizabeth's reign, In a decent and virtuous age, That they ne'er might give modesty pain, No female appeared on the stage. But lo, what a change time affords! The ladies, 'mong many strange things, Call for helmets, for breeches and swords, And act Senators, Hervos, and Kings.'

If the anonymous 'vinegar merchant' could have been transported into the present time, how much more would he have been shocked by the 'change which time affords!' Could he now take a trip to London (so serious a matter a century ago, but made so quickly and cheaply now by means of a return ticket by rail), what would he think of the state of matters in our theatres? It was only in private theatricals that ladies donned the male costume a century ago, and they were always draped with the strictest propriety. But what do we see in London theatres now? Not only in the so-called 'burlesques' does the main 'fun,' such as it is, consist in the transposition of the sexes--men taking female characters, and women the part of males--but the costumes of the female performers, rich and picturesque as they usually are, are devised expressly to make a prodigal display of the person, a minimum of clothes apparently being the acme of perfection kept in view by the theatrical costumiers, and by the ladies themselves. The female figure is now so prodigally displayed that a handsome girl, especially if she has well-turned legs, is sought after on that account alone. 'My shape is my fortune, sir, she said!' would now be the burden of the song of these demi-nude demoiselles of the stage. To such a pitch has this new method of attracting audiences been carried, that this class of performances, or rather exhibitions, are now known in theatrical parlance as 'leg-pieces.' It is impossible not to see what a demoralising influence such performances must have upon the rising generation, indeed upon the whole audience. It is a lamentable sign of the times: it is a symptom of degeneration, of corruption, of a fatal laxity of manners. The relation between the sexes is becoming seriously deteriorated; and woman, instead of being peculiarly an object of respectful regard or chivalrous admiration, tends to become simply an object of pleasure, seeking to please at any cost. Most rightly did the Lord Chamberlain recently issue his fiat against the short skirts of the ballet-dancers: but the fiat has been vain, as all such injunctions in this 'free' country must be when public opinion refuses to support it, or at last allows itself to be overpowered by the crowd of playgoers who delight in such spectacles. A gangrene of selfish and demoralising pleasure is now eating into the heart of this country; and we fear the social malady will not be checked save by the advent of some terrible national calamity--let us hope not so terrible as that by which our neighbour France is now being purged as by fire.

Before quitting the lighter and gossipy items to be found in these letters, let us say a word or two about the rich Court costumes of the period. We need not speak of the dresses of the ladies; for although the fashion of those dresses has changed, indeed is ceaselessly changing, in richness and costliness female attire at the present time is quite on a par with what it was when George the Second was king. But a notable change has taken place in the full dress of the men. Probably only a minority of our readers can remember the time when colour disappeared from the evening costume of gentlemen: it is nearly forty years since coloured coats, with white or coloured silk or velvet waistcoats vanished from the private dinner-party and ball-room--though the taste for colour is now reviving. Warren, in Ten Thousand a Year, dresses his hero Gammon for the evening in blue coat with metal buttons, white waistcoat, and black trousers--and such was a quiet evening dress of that time. In the long interval since then, there has been a monotonous reign of simple black cloth. The change in the Court or gala dress has been still more striking. Apropos of this change, a philosophic writer has remarked, that whenever any class abandons its distinctive costume, it is a sign of decadence and coming extinction. There is some truth in the remark, but it is partial truth only. It ignores the fact that the peculiar source of distinction for each class, and especially with the nobility, who are or ought to be the leaders of the nation, varies from age to age with the spirit of the times. It might as well be said that our nobility verged on extinction three centuries ago, when they ceased to wear mail and to lead their retainers to the field. No doubt the French Revolution, with its levelling doctrines, and the principle of social equality (not new in this country), tended to abolish the 'bravery' of dress previously distinctive of the nobility; but the change was far more due to the gravity of the times, the sober spirit natural during a most critical period of the country, and of the economy rendered necessary throughout the community at large by the heavy costs of the great war with France. Indeed, the fact that a corresponding change took place in the gala dress of the middle classes serves to show that there was nothing exceptional or peculiar in the diminished finery of the aristocratic costume. All classes alike felt the sobering influence of the time, and then, as in all such cases, a corresponding change took place in costume.

Firstly, then, as to the gala costume of the Prince of Wales, afterwards George III., who certainly cannot be suspected of too great a devotion to fashion or the frivolities of dress. In a Drawing-room in St. James's in 1745, the Prince of Wales wore a light-blue velvet coat, laced with silver, and the sleeves of it brocade--as was also his waistcoat. On another occasion he 'had on a crimson damask laced with silver, very rich and handsome.' Again, the Countess of Shaftesbury, writing to her cousin, Mr. Harris, in December, 1754, 'enlivening her epistle with a detail of the birthday finery' at Court, says: 'The Prince of Wales looked as blooming as his clothes; they were a blossom-coloured velvet, with gold and lace down before; the waistcoat and cuffs a rich white-and-gold stuff. Prince Edward's was a yellow and silver velvet, with a silver lace before, turned up with white and silver cuffs, and the waistcoat the same.' She adds: 'My lord's clothes and mine were both admired. His was a very rich scarlet and gold velvet coat--waistcoat and breeches the same; and mine a gold stuff with purple spots on the ground, and coloured sprigs of flowers that looked like embroidery.' On a similar occasion, 'Lord Kildare was unexceptionably the finest of any gentleman there: his coat was a light-blue silk, embroidered all over with gold and silver in a very curious manner, turned up with white satin, embroidered as the other; the waistcoat the same as his sleeves.' His Majesty (George II.), however, by no means set the fashion in gala dress. Even at Drawing-rooms, we read, 'he dressed in his usual way, without aiming at finery of any sort;' his usual costume being a deep-blue cloth coat, trimmed with silver lace, and waistcoat the same. At another Birthday Drawing-room, 'the King was dressed in black velvet; the sleeves of his coat and his waistcoat were red, embroidered with gold.' The last time his Majesty's costume at Drawing-rooms is mentioned is in 1754, six years before his death, when we find the following curious statement, that 'his Majesty had told Mr. Shutz [the fashionable German tailor of the day] he would have him bespeak him a very handsome suit, but not to make a boy or a fop of him;' and as the result of this consultation with his tailor, his Majesty appeared in brown, very richly laced with silver, and turned up with a blue cuff laced, and a blue and silver waistcoat.' We read of 'very mortifying disasters' happening at some of these Birthday Drawing-rooms. On one such occasion, the Countess of Salisbury writes:--

'Miss Young, in making her curtsey to his Majesty, entangled the heel of her shoe [there were high heels in those days] in her train, so that she fell quite backwards, with her legs up. The laugh was so general that nobody thought of helping the poor young creature, until his Majesty, though as well diverted as the rest, said he would go himself; but, as you may imagine, was prevented. Lady Young was not in less confusion than her daughter.

'The second hustle was about Miss Corke, whose hoop, in climbing over the Foreigner's box, caught in such a manner that all her petticoats flew up, to the undermost flannel. Lady Arvon, in endeavouring to help her, was caught in the hoop, which pulled off her fine diamond sprig and head-dress.'

As might be expected, there were flirtations, runaway matches, and mésalliances in those days, as they are still. One of the beauties immortalized by the pencil of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and whose portrait is preserved at Holland House, gave rise to much gossip by marrying a 'player:'--

'The Court and assembly's talk yesterday was all of the match of Lady Susan Strangeways and O'Brien, the player. It is said she went out on Saturday with a servant, whom, under pretext of having forgotten something, she sent back, and said she would wait in the street till her return. O'Brien was waiting in a hackney coach, which she got into; and they went to Covent Garden Church, and were married. 'Tis a most surprising event, as Lady Susan was everything that was good and amiable; and how she ever got acquainted with this man is not to be accounted for. They say she sent him £200 a little time since. She is of age.'

Gretna Green, on the Scottish borders, although it has now relapsed into the obscurity natural to such a poor little hamlet (although it still gives name to a railway station), was a famous place in those days in connection with runaway matches; indeed, it was so even within the memory of the present generation. A century ago, we often read of lovers having 'gone to Scotland.' Among others--

'Lady Jane Tollemache, daughter to Lord Dysart, is gone to Scotland with a Captain Halliday of the Light Horse: his father is a man of fortune. The captain was just going to to be married to Miss Byron; the coach and clothes were bought; but he saw Lady Jane twice at the Richmond assembly, was captivated, wrote a letter to Miss Byron, to inform her he had changed his mind, and had set out for Scotland.' [The gay captain would have had to pay heavy damages for so cavalier a proceeding now-a-days.]

Whatever amount of what is commonly called 'scandal,' and which merits a worse name, there may have been in our aristocratic circles in the latter half of last century, there is but little trace of it to be found in these letters. But in one of Mrs. Harris's letters to her son, giving him the talk and gossip of the town, there is a mysterious-looking allusion to some such matrimonial scandal, which reads as follows:--'Lady S---- B---- is in lodgings at Knightsbridge. She says her husband [whom doubtless she had deserted] is a most angelic man; but her attachment for the other is so great, she must live with him.'

What was the 'Pantheon' in those days? Whatever else it was, it appears to have been a sort of assembly-rooms for balls and dances; and, though frequented by persons of rank and of the highest respectability, its doors were not impregnable against the entrance of 'soiled doves' and doubtful reputations--whose presence, however, was against the rules of the place, for, as the following embarrassing incident to one of Mrs. Harris's daughters shows, they were liable to be turned out. Mrs. Harris thus writes of it to her son:--

'Wednesday your two sisters, Molly Cambridge, and I, went to the Pantheon. It is undoubtedly the finest and most complete thing ever seen in England. Such mixture of company never assembled before under the same roof. Lord Mansfield, Mrs. Baddeley, Lord Chief Baron Parker, Mrs. Abbingdon, Sir James Porter, Madlle. Heinell, Lords Hyde and Camden, with many other serious men, and most of the gay ladies in town, and ladies of the best rank and character--and, by appearance, some very low people. Louisa is thought very like Mrs. Baddeley [one of the gay ladies]; and Gertrude and I had our doubts whether our characters might not suffer by walking with her [i.e., Louisa]; but had they offered to turn her out, we depended upon Mr. Hanger's protection. [George Hanger, of the Guards, was one of the great beaux of his day.] None of the fashion dance country-dances or minuets in the great room, though there were a number of minuets and a large set of dancers. I saw Miss Wilks dance a minuet; some young ladies danced cotillons in the cotillon gallery.... The spectacle at first strikes one greatly, but then it becomes stupid.'

The domain of personal incident crops up richly and interestingly throughout these volumes, and comes freshly and truthfully upon us in the correspondence of the hour. Whether we read of Lady ----, who ran away with her footman John, and sent back her fine clothes, 'because she would no longer have any need for them;' or of the deep gambling and other queer affairs of Charles Fox in his dissipated youth; or of the sayings and doings of the notorious Wilkes, who so shocked society, or of his duel, in which he bore himself so honourably, the epistolary narrative is full of naïveté and interest. The second marriage of Lord Coventry (whose first wife was the elder of the beautiful Miss Gunnings) must have been what is now called 'good fun.' The marriage party was all assembled in stately magnificence; but his Grace of Canterbury was from home, and the licence did not arrive! But the party was equal to the emergency--'so it was agreed that they should eat the dinner, rather than it should be spoiled. So to dinner they went [at the early hour then in fashion], and sat all the afternoon, dressed in their white and silver, expecting every moment the express from Lambeth, but nothing came. The same reason held good for eating a supper as for eating the dinner; and in short they supped and sat till after two, and then, by mutual consent, dismissed the parson, and all retired.' Two hours afterwards (4 a.m.) the express with the licence arrived, and the ceremony went off with due éclat in the forenoon. We may remark that it is comforting to find in these letters of the day a guarantee for the genuineness of many of the excellent bonmots and repartees which have taken their place in our anecdotical literature in connection with the more or less famous men of that period, and which sparkle pleasantly across the pages of these volumes.

But quitting the domain of purely personal incident, let us glance at some passages in the letters which throw curious light upon the England of our forefathers in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Here is a picture of Cambridgeshire which looks strange now, and which indeed startled the writer thereof, Mrs. Harris, when she and her husband went on a visit to their friend the Dean of Sarum's parsonage in that locality. She says that the country is the most disagreeable she ever saw; and talking of the Fens, says that the herds of cattle which feed on them in the summer months are up to their bellies in water even in the dry season:--

'The natives dry the cowdung for firing in the winter; so 'tis kept in heaps about the fields, as is also the dung of their yards; so when you walk, the stink is inconceivable. Mr. Harris took a ride to survey these fens, and he says nothing can be so detestable. He talked with the natives, who told him that during the winter the water was constantly above the ancles in their houses.'

'The Dean's parsonage is surrounded with fens, and you are teased beyond expression by the gnats. When we got here, the Dean's butler came to your father with a pair of leather stockings [the dress of that day was breeches and silk stockings] to draw on so as to protect his legs, which in hot weather [it was the month of June] is dreadful. Besides this, the beds have a machine covered with a silk net, which lets down after you are in bed, and covers you all over. Without this, there could be no sleeping; for, notwithstanding these precautions, we were most miserably stung.'

Were anyone to light upon this passage in an isolated form nowadays, he would conclude without hesitation that it was an extract from some Indian diary--the use of the word 'natives' completing the resemblance. Here we have the Indian plague of mosquitoes existing in full severity in England, and also the use of mosquito-nets around the beds at night, exactly as in India. Nay, there is still another point of resemblance--namely, in the use which the Cambridgeshire 'natives' made of the cow-dung: drying and using it as fuel, as is the common practice of the natives of our Eastern Empire.

In the letters which relate to the events of the Rebellion of 1745, and the march of the rebels into the heart of England, we have ample proof alike of the general ignorance of places now well known to every one, and of a want of the means of information in regard even to the great events taking place in other parts of the kingdom, which read strangely in these times when every morning we can know from the newspapers the very way the wind is blowing in every quarter of our island. The Highland army marches to and fro in its daring enterprise, although several separate armies (Wade's, Ligonier's, the Duke of Cumberland's, &c.) are on foot to meet or catch them: indeed, as we read in these letters, 'more troops are in England than ever was known before,' yet notwithstanding, the hardy light-moving Highlanders get through them all into the heart of England, and quite as easily back again. We cannot help thinking that the English generals had not much stomach for their work. They were astonished and something more by the sudden and total rout of Sir John Cope's army, and by the daring and marvellous rapidity of the rebels' march; and it must be allowed that even in their retreat, the Highlanders gave a good account of any force that tried to bar their passage. As the noble editor incidentally observes, General Wade (who was posted in the north of England to stop the southward march of the rebels) only became famous after the rebellion was over; and his marching and counter-marching to catch the rebels was of a very helpless character indeed.

Smuggling, as well as rebellion, profited greatly by the roadless character of England in those days. Mr. and Mrs. Harris, on returning home one night from Heron Court, then the property of their friend Mr. Hooper, had great difficulty in getting over Ringwood Heath, an adjoining waste land, about five miles in length--'the vile heath,' as Mrs. Harris calls it--even with 'the assistance of two servants riding before.' Heron Court now belongs to the Malmesbury family; and the editor, in a foot-note, states that until the beginning of the present century there were no roads but smugglers' tracks across those heaths. They were a favourite place for contraband transit from the south coast; and he mentions that all classes aided in carrying on this traffic. 'The farmers lent their teams and labourers, and the gentry openly connived at the practice, and dealt with the smugglers. The cargoes, chiefly of brandy, were easily concealed in the furze bushes, that extended from Ringwood to Poole, and in the New Forest for thirty miles.' We suspect that the impossibility of carrying on such operations nowadays has had much more to do with their cessation than the improvement in the morality of the age. Look at the customary frauds in making returns to the income-tax, and then say whether the middle-classes are a whit more honest in fiscal matters now than they used to be when smuggling was rife.

How vastly London has changed and grown since the last century need not be said, and the contrast between then and now, meets one almost in every page of these lively letters. There was no Rotten-row, or the fashionable rides in the Park, which make so gay a sight now in the summer afternoons; and the whole district north of the Park knew nothing of the noble streets and terraces which now occupy the space. Mrs. Harris speaks with delight, almost rapture, of the sweet rural beauty of a 'ride to Paddington of a July morning.' But with all our knowledge of the change which has come over the British metropolis since that time, it is startling to find that some nameless Dick Turpin or Claude Duval could ply his trade with impunity even within the courtly precincts of St. James's. In February, 1773, Mrs. Harris writes that 'a most audacious fellow robbed Sir Francis Holburne and his sisters in their coach, in St. James's Square, coming from the Opera. He was on horseback, and held a pistol close to the breast of one of the Miss Holburnes for a considerable time. She had left her purse at home--which he would not believe. He has since robbed a coach in Park Lane.' In these letters, too, there is the earliest mention which we have met with of the tiny member of the finny tribe which now confers a greater popular renown upon Greenwich than even its world-famous Observatory or its magnificent Hospital, and which for a generation has caused that place to be the honoured scene of the annual Ministerial banquet at which our rulers meet together to congratulate one another upon the approaching close of the Parliamentary session,--the famous 'whitebait dinner,' which within the last two years has fallen into abeyance, perhaps never to be revived. Mr. Harris, the founder of the family and father of the first Earl Malmesbury, was then (1763) a Lord of the Admiralty; and Mrs. Harris describes a 'most agreeable expedition on the Thames,' which she had with a party in the 'Admiralty barge.' After seeing Woolwich and all its military wonders, the lady says:--

'We got back to Greenwich to dine. We had the smallest fish I ever saw, called whitebait: they are only to be eat at Greenwich, and are held in high estimation by the epicures; they are not so large as the smallest of minnows, but are really very good eating. We dined in a charming place in the open air, which commanded a fine view of the Thames; but were obliged to leave it at six o'clock, as the tide was so cruel as not to stay for us--and they never venture to shoot the bridge [old London bridge] with the Admiralty barge at low water. We had a beastly walk through the Borough after we landed.'

Let us now quit old England for a moment to take a passing glance at the Continent. As we have already said, the 'Diaries and Correspondence' of the first Earl of Malmesbury are a rich mine of political information and personal anecdote concerning the leading Courts of Europe; but we must here confine our few gleanings of this kind from the newly published 'Letters,' and content ourselves with some sketches of the state of matters in France, in the period of decay and rottenness which preceded the outburst of the terrible but life-reviving Revolution. Young Mr. Harris (afterwards the first Earl), then only in his twenty-second year, is passing through Paris in November, 1768, on his way to assume a diplomatic post at Madrid, and thus he writes of the French capital:--

'I see no new improvements since I was last here; and, except a few new fashions for caps and muffs, I believe nothing has changed materially. On such subjects alone do this lively people exercise their inventive faculties, since the decease of Louis le Grand. They have now no capital painters, few good sculptors, and still fewer good authors; for the modern set of French writers are either totally devoid of talents, or else employ them in such a manner, and on such subjects, as to render their works of very little use to the community. To pass for an esprit fort is all their ambition; and when a man has written down all religions, without distinction, they cry, "Pardi! c'est un grand homme: il pense hardiment!"'

Turning from fashion and infidelity, the young diplomatist in another letter describes the political aspect of affairs; remarking, inter alia, that the Government 'are now expending the revenues of the year 1771 [three years in advance!] at the same time that the people are labouring under the greatest necessity; garden stuff and bread, the chief nourishment of the lower class in this country, being raised in price one-third since last winter, and the greatest appearance also that there will not be a sufficient quantity of either to supply the winter.' But Court life and pageantry went on quand même. Seven years later, a Dr. Jean takes up the correspondence from Paris. Speaking of the Anglomania then prevalent, and which mingled with the Court gaieties, he writes that the 'young Queen' (Marie Antoinette) has made herself unpopular by 'a little misunderstanding in etiquette' between her and the princes of the blood, and also by her great predilection for everything that is English. And he describes a horse race, 'which is now become a very frequent and frequented amusement.' Most of the cavaliers in the concourse were 'badly imitating the English mode of riding;' also 'ladies of fashion, clad in boots and leather breeches, astride on their horses!' The Queen, with all her court, were upon the stand at the starting post; and the race was 'managed by English grooms (jackés as they call them) and English horses.' The same correspondent also gives a description of a bal paré in 'the most decorated room perhaps in the world,' the Opera House at Versailles. He says that Lord Clive, who was present, 'declared that Asiatic display of riches appeared but as tinsel to the brilliancy of the French court on that occasion.' 'The room,' says Dr. Jean 'was filled by between three and four thousand people, dressed in the richest, and at the same time the most fancied, taste imaginable. The show which French ladies always make above those of other nations added much to the spectacle. The ornaments of their head-dress, and their robes, so disposed and varied, composed a most beautiful tout ensemble. In regard to their persons, to be sure, they seemed to be almost all of the same family, from the similarity of their complexions, and the unity of their dress. It appeared to me an assembly of houris.' He describes the Queen as 'very majestic, and at a distance very handsome,' also with a remarkably fine hand and arm; and he adds that she gives life to almost all public amusements, and 'is very familiar with those who are in favour,'--an amiable though perhaps not dignified trait which brought her sad woe in the end, in consequence of the calumnies set on foot against her by her base and contemptible relative, the Duke of Orleans, Philippe Egalité.

A romantic incident connected with the French Revolution happened to Lord Malmesbury in 1793, when the French nobility and clergy were flying from the sanguinary proscriptions of the Reign of Terror. He was walking one day on the pier at Brighton (not then the scene of gaiety and fashion which it is now), when a French fishing-boat approached the pier, and one of the crew jumped out with a baby in his arms, and addressed him. The poor fisherman said that a lady, known and beloved by himself and his comrades, had thrown the baby into their boat, entreating them to save its life by carrying it to England, whither, she said, if she were spared, she would follow it. They had accordingly stood over for Brighton, to entrust the infant, as the lady desired, to the first Englishman they met. Lord Malmesbury at once took charge of the helpless little exile, and had it conveyed to Lady Malmesbury at his house. In a few weeks, the mother, after many hair-breadth escapes, found her way to England, and knowing where the child had been landed, soon discovered its place of refuge. The baby became a handsome and fascinating woman, and, as Madame Alfred de Noailles, was for many years a leader of fashion in the first circles of Paris. When Lady Malmesbury was at Paris in 1816, we find her writing of Madame Alfred as 'our daughter;' and his quondam protégé, in all her letters to Lord Malmesbury, used to sign herself 'Leontine Harris.'

Although tempted to linger longer over these interesting letters, our narrowing limits warn us that we must leave untrod a large portion of the field which they present, alike for gossiping and for sage historical reflection. But ere we close, we must say a few words as to the leading members of the family whose correspondence has now been given to the world. Of Mr. James Harris, who, though not himself ennobled, may justly be regarded as the founder of the Malmesbury family, we have already spoken. He was a literary man of fine tastes, a member of Parliament, and a subordinate member of several Administrations. He does not appear to have had the brilliant abilities of his son, the first Earl; but he had a pleasant and healthy temperament, a perfect rectitude of nature, and a sound sagacity, which qualities have since been hereditary in the family. There are only a few letters of his in this collection, but in almost every one of these, brief though they are, there is some remark or other which shows his shrewd and healthy common sense, whether in great matters or little ones. When a motion was made in the House (1770), to restrain revenue officers from voting at elections (a disfranchisement only recently removed), Mr. Harris writes that it was 'a rather tedious debate, full of that patriotic commonplace which nobody believes that talks it, nor anyone else but a few dupes in the provinces.' When we were on the eve of war with Spain, in 1770, about the Falkland Islands, he writes:--'It moves me to indignation that two respectable nations, naturally made for friends, should take to cutting one another's throats for a paltry island, not better than Bagshot Heath, and which if it were merged in the ocean, would be no loss to either. Let it be with nations as with individuals: if ye can help it, don't quarrel at all--'tis more conformant to your social nature; but if ye must quarrel, for heaven's sake let it not be for trifles, for objects of the lowest contempt.' But when this Spanish difficulty was happily got over, to the general satisfaction of the country, which, he says, 'does not wish a war, whatever wicked patriots may endeavour;' he adds, 'None make such audacious use of the word people as these do--a word which often means no more than themselves, and their ignorant or interested followers.'

His son, the first Earl of Malmesbury, was perhaps the ablest diplomatist whom England has produced; certainly he was second to none in the long roll of distinguished men who have served the State as ambassadors and ministers in foreign countries. There is an anecdote of his boyhood, narrated by his relative Lord Shaftesbury, which perhaps may be taken as an indication of the courage and self-reliance which the youth was afterwards to display in a very different form. As his mother was walking one day with some friends before her house in the Close at Salisbury, she descried some one climbing up the spire of the cathedral; and having obtained a glass the better to observe so perilous a feat, she immediately dropped it, exclaiming, 'Good heavens! it is James!' The astonished lady had discovered her only son upon the apex of the tallest steeple in Great Britain. Of his life at Oxford, he himself (taking a retrospect in 1800) gives a poor account, either as regards learning or amusements. He says that the set of men with whom he lived were very pleasant, but very idle fellows. 'Our life was an imitation of high life in London: luckily, drinking was not the fashion; but what we did drink was claret, and we had our regular round of evening card parties, to the great annoyance of our finances. It has often been a matter of surprise to me how so many of us [Charles Fox, Lord Auckland, Bishop North, and others] made our way so well in the world, and so creditably.' From Oxford he went to the University of Leyden; and as he became a favourite with our Minister at the Hague, young Harris had ample opportunities of mingling in the court life, and also of studying carefully the political affairs of Holland--a knowledge which he was afterwards destined to turn to most valuable account. In the following year (1767) he made a journey to Prussia, Poland, and Paris; and in 1768, although only in his twenty-second year, he was appointed secretary of embassy at the Court of Madrid. In this post, an opportunity arising, the youth greatly distinguished himself; for, having been temporarily left chargé d'affaires, he undertook upon his own responsibility the critical affair of the Falkland Islands, which he conducted so admirably as to win the praise of both political parties at home; and the issue, so honourable to England, at once established his diplomatic reputation, and obtained for him in the following year the post of Minister at Berlin, where Frederick the Great, although past his prime, reigned in the full vigour of his tyrannical and eccentric genius. Next, after a few months in England in 1776, when he married, he was sent to St. Petersburg as our minister at the Court of the Empress Catherine, whose shameless passion for 'favourites' affected even her policy, and where he had a hard battle to fight, owing to the Empress's ill-will to England, although his esprit and remarkable conversational talents made him personally much more liked by the Empress than any of his diplomatic rivals. It appears to have been a costly office, and diplomatic salaries at that time were so inadequate that on leaving Russia he had diminished his private fortune to the extent of £20,000.

The severe climate of Russia broke down his health, and he returned to England in 1782, having previously received from the King the Order of the Bath, in acknowledgement of his services at the Russian Court. But two years afterwards he was despatched to the Hague, at that moment the scene of the most active political operations and manoeuvres; the Stadtholder being then threatened with deposition, and Holland with subjection to France. In this emergency, Sir James Harris matured a bold plan of an Anglo-Prussian alliance and an intervention on behalf of Holland; a project which Mirabeau, the French agent at Berlin, when he got wind of it, scouted as absurd, et seulement la conception personelle de cet audacieux et rusé Harris, but which completely succeeded--freeing Holland from her peril, and winning high fame for its bold projector, who was created Baron Malmesbury, and received honours from the King of Prussia and the Stadtholder. Lord Malmesbury now enjoyed the almost unbounded confidence of his Government in all matters relating to foreign politics, and was entrusted with all the most important missions. In 1793, he was sent to Berlin, and in 1796 and again in the following year he was sent to France to endeavour to negotiate a peace with the French Directory. We cannot do more than simply mention those important missions; but we cannot refrain from noticing a mission of a very different kind which befel him in 1794, when he received orders 'to ask of the Duke of Brunswick his daughter in marriage for the Prince of Wales.' Lord Malmesbury had little hope of this union turning out well, but he had no discretionary power in the matter, so he married her Royal Highness by proxy, and brought her over to England. The Prince of Wales never forgave Lord Malmesbury for his share in this affair, which was certainly hard upon his Lordship, especially as he had no end of difficulties with the German princess, as well as with some of the ladies of the Court, who had reasons of their own for hating Prince George's fiancée. Here is his Lordship's account of the first interview between the Princess and her royal betrothed:--

'I, according to the established etiquette, introduced (no one else being in the room) the Princess Caroline to him. She very properly, in consequence of my saying to her it was the right mode of proceeding, attempted to kneel to him. He raised her (gracefully enough), and embraced her, said barely one word, turned round, retired to a distant part of the apartment, and calling me to him said, "Harris, I am not well, pray get me a glass of brandy." I said, "Sir, had you not better have a glass of water?" upon which he, much out of humour, said with an oath, "No!" and away he went. The Princess, left during the short moment alone, was in a state of astonishment, and on my joining her said, "Mon Dieu! est-ce que le Prince est toujours comme cela? Je le trouve très gros, et nullement aussi beau que son portrait." I said His Royal Highness was naturally a good deal affected and flurried at this first interview, but she certainly would find him different at dinner.

'At dinner I was far from satisfied with the Princess's behaviour; it was flippant, rattling, affected raillery and wit, and throwing out coarse vulgar hints about Lady ----, who was present, and, though mute, le diable n'en perdait rien. The Prince was evidently disgusted. And this unfortunate dinner fixed his dislike, which, when, left to herself, the Princess had not the talent to remove, but, by still observing the same giddy manners and attempts at cleverness and coarse sarcasm, increased it till it became positive hatred.'

Soon after the Earl's last diplomatic mission to France, in 1797, he was seriously attacked by deafness, in consequence of which infirmity he thought it right to decline all further State employment either in the Cabinet or abroad; but during the lives of Mr. Pitt and the Duke of Portland, he remained in the most intimate political confidence of those Ministers and their principal colleagues. Indeed, during the greater part of the war with Napoleon, every scrap of important news received at the Foreign Office appears to have been forwarded to him; and in 1814 he was consulted by Lord Liverpool's Government on the readjustment of Europe, and the arrangements relating to Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Prussia, were principally suggested and settled by him. During the closing years of his life (he died in 1820, at the age of seventy-five), he passed most of his time in London and at Parkplace, his seat near Henley, receiving at his house constantly, and with the same pleasure, the rising generation of statesmen and literary men, as he had shown formerly in associating with his own distinguished contemporaries. He early appreciated the high talents of Mr. Canning, Lord Grenville, and Lord Palmerston, and used his influence with the statesmen of the time to draw special attention to those illustrious men who have now become memorable in English history. He was the guardian of Lord Palmerston, and by his influence obtained for him his first official appointment.

Two portraits of the Earl are given in these volumes: one taken in the early part of his career when he was simple Mr. Harris, the other when he was full of years and honours, at the age of seventy. Both are handsome faces, but though the first has the advantage of youth, with a look of esprit and lively courage, the second is really the finer and nobler head--a phenomenon only observable in rare cases, where high intellect is united with goodness of heart and a well-balanced temperament. His grandson, who edits these works, and who--in consonance with the principles of life so wisely and admirably laid down by the first Earl, with special reference to the nobility, but whose beautiful precepts are applicable to all spheres of life--has devoted himself from youth to the public service, and has twice been the Foreign Minister of England, appends some true remarks as to the difference in the work and responsibilities of diplomatists which has been created by the progress of civilization and the great change in the political condition of the nations of Europe. But the result of those changes has been to lessen the responsibility and lighten the labour of our Ministers abroad, and the contrast serves only to heighten the well-won reputation of the diplomatist whose 'Letters and Correspondence' have supplied materials for this article. The cynical but pre-eminently sagacious Talleyrand, speaking simply of Lord Malmesbury's intellectual powers and knowledge of human nature, apart from those high personal qualities by which he was distinguished, said, Je crois que Lord Malmesbury était le plus habile Ministre que vous aviez de son temps. C'était inutile de le devancer, il fallait le suivre de près. Si on lui laissait le dernier mot, il avait toujours raison. And as is shown alike by his official career, and by his private correspondence, we may well apply to the first Lord Malmesbury the epithet by which M. Thiers has so truly characterized Mr. Pitt--'ce pur Anglais.'

ART. IV.--The Explorations in Palestine. Publications of the Palestine Exploration Fund, viz.--

(1.) Report of Preliminary Meeting, 1865.

(2.) Captain Wilson's Expedition, 1866.

(3.) Meeting at Cambridge, 1867.

(4.) Annual Meeting, with Lieutenant Warren's Report, 1868.

(5.) Statement of Progress, January 1st, 1869.

(6.) Lieutenant Warren's Letters and Reports, with Lithographed Plans.

(7.) Lieutenant Warren's Notes on the Valley of the Jordan, and Excavations at Ain es Sultan (Jericho.)

(8.) Dean Stanley's Sermon on the Exploration of Palestine.

(9--15.) Quarterly Statements I. to VII., April, 1869, to October, 1870.

(16.) The Recovery of Jerusalem. Edited by the Honorary Officers of the Palestine Exploration Fund. With Fifty Illustrations. Richard Bentley.

The Palestine Exploration Society was established in 1865, for the accurate and systematic investigation of the archeology, topography, geology, physical geography, and manners and customs of the Holy Land, for Biblical illustration. The universality of interest belonging to Palestine, and the inefficiency of individual efforts at exploration, made the step advisable; while the success of the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem in 1864 at once suggested the scheme and gave encouragement to its promoters. In the original prospectus of the Society it was proposed to excavate at Jerusalem for the purpose of ascertaining the extent of the Temple enclosure, the position of the tombs of the kings, the site of the Tower of Antonia, &c; to examine other important sites, such as Gerizim, Samaria, Jiljilieh (probably Gilgal) and the mounds at Jericho; to collect materials for a work on manners and customs comparable to Mr. Lane's 'Modern Egyptians;' to effect an accurate survey of the Holy Land; to determine levels and sites and the course of ancient roads; to investigate the geology of the country, especially in the Valley of Jordan and basin of the Dead Sea; and lastly, to apply the same energy and ability to the study of the botany, zoology, and meteorology of Palestine, which naturalists have given to those of the forests of South America and the rivers of Africa. The time is come when we may ask how much of this programme has been carried out, and what amount of light, if any, is being thrown on the Scriptural history. Three years ago, we touched upon the subject;[10] but the Society was then in its infancy, its work only just begun, and the publication of results confined to one or two small pamphlets. We now have at least enough reports to make a thick octavo volume, and these so packed with technical details that they will have to be spread out into three volumes more before their information can be grasped by the ordinary reader. We have, moreover, now before us the book called the 'Recovery of Jerusalem,' which is partly such an expansion and partly a comment on the work, with a trifle of new material.

The active work of the Society commenced in December, 1865, when Captain Wilson, E.E., and Lieutenant Anderson, E.E., with Corporal Phillips, as photographer, landed at Beyrout, to probe the country from north to south. Captain Wilson was the intelligent officer who had surveyed Jerusalem the previous year, and given us a map of that city, as accurate and reliable in every particular as any map to be had to-day of the city of London. This first expedition, in the course of six months, traversed Palestine from Damascus to Hebron, constructing a series of maps of the entire backbone of the country, excavating at Tel Salhiyeh (near Damascus), at Kedes (Kadesh Naphtali), and Mount Gerizim; examining remains of ancient synagogues, copying old inscriptions, collecting materials for about fifty plans, with detailed drawings of churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, and tombs, and tracing the ancient system of irrigation of the Plain of Gennesareth. The report of this tentative expedition was in favour of Jerusalem as the headquarters of any future exploring party, since that city promised to prove the greatest mine of discoveries, and to yield the quickest results. Accordingly, in November, 1866, we find Lieutenant Warren, R.E., at work in Palestine, at first with only Sergeant Birtles for his assistant, but afterwards with several corporals as well, and with permission to engage a number of native labourers, according to the amount of excavation going on. Lieutenant Warren spent two months in survey-work east and west of Jordan, and then concentrated his energies on Jerusalem, where he laboured at shafts and galleries almost incessantly, till he was invalided home, in May of the year 1870.

Although the operations at Jerusalem, besides being the more extensive, are also the more interesting in character, it may be well to look, first, at the results of Captain Wilson's expedition, and in connection with that officer's work, to consider the later labours of Warren, where they are of the same kind. First, with regard to the survey-work: it is marvellous that we have never yet had a decently correct map of the land in which all Christians are so much interested. The Admiralty have given us correct charts of the coast-line, but in the interior of the country hundreds of sites remain to be verified, and hundreds to be discovered; while the east of Jordan is almost a terra incognita, and the maps of it scarcely more than creations of the fancy. It is as though in England we were acquainted with but the line of the Great Northern Railway and the towns within a little distance of it on either side, and in Wales knew only the position of three or four of the principal towns. The Wilson exploring party fixed for the first time the exact latitude and longitude of nearly seventy places between Damascus and Jerusalem, determined many sites, ascertained heights, and recorded the features of the ground along which they passed. Lieutenant Warren has obtained the latitude and longitude of many scores of places, fixed the height of some hundreds, and surveyed so much ground that the committee are able to announce the map of Palestine, on the scale of one inch to the mile, as 'now approaching completion.' Much of this work was done in the dangerous country east of Jordan, where life is not safe without an escort, and the sheikh who bargains to protect you is ready to sell you to the next chieftain who thinks your friends can pay a ransom.

Connected with the surveying is the settlement of topographical questions. We have seen an old book which professed to give the latitude and longitude of every place visited by the Scriptural kings, prophets and apostles, with their relative positions and distances from one another in miles. Such information, if reliable, would be of great value, for there is so close a connection between history and geography that in some cases the first cannot be understood without a knowledge of the second; and in most cases the geographical or topographical knowledge will at least assist us to realise the history.

In this department our knowledge is still scanty, though good service has been rendered by the explorers. The site of Capernaum, which has been fixed in three different places by Egmont, Robinson, and De Saulcy, and which Dean Stanley regarded as utterly lost, has been fixed by Wilson with very small chance of error, where Soewulf placed it in the beginning of the twelfth century, viz., at Tel Hum,[11] on the north-western corner of the lake. The determining circumstance was the discovery of the irrigation of the plain of Gennesareth, as described by Josephus,[12] and its connection with the Tabighah Fountain, whereas attention had previously been fixed on the Round Fountain. It is confirmatory of Wilson's view, that while at the Round Fountain there are no ruins, except some small foundations which may have been anything, Tel Hum possesses extensive ruins, including those of a synagogue. Two miles north of Tel Hum--at Kerazeh, a spot indicated by the Rev. G. Williams, in 1842, and indeed by Pococke, as early as 1740--Lieutenant Anderson identified Chorazin, by the presence of extensive remains, including those of a synagogue. Of no less interest is the discovery of the scene of the destruction of the herd of swine. Lord Lindsay, Mr. Elliott, and others had been on the eastern shores of the lake, but their accounts were mutually contradictory; and Dean Stanley, after rewriting his note on the place again and again, had been obliged to scratch it out altogether. It now appears that there is only one place--namely, Khersa, about half way between Wady Fîk and Wady Semakh--which fulfils all the conditions required by the Biblical narrative. The hills which everywhere else on the eastern side receded from a half to three-quarters of a mile from the water's edge, here approach within forty feet of it; not, indeed, terminating abruptly, but presenting a steep, even slope. The 'Dictionary of the Bible' places the scene at Gadara, now Um Keis, a place from which the swine would have had a hard gallop of two hours before reaching the lake.

We have also in these publications an admirable paper by Captain Wilson, 'On the site of Ai and the position of the Altar which Abram built between Bethel and Ai;' and another by the Rev. Dr. Zeller, Protestant clergyman at Nazareth, on 'Kefr Kenna.' As the old Hebrew names of places commonly cling to the spot under some Arabic disguise--the hill of Dan, for instance, being now Tel el-Kadi (both Kadi in Arabic, and Dan in Hebrew, being equivalent to 'judge' in English)--it is doing good service to collect Arabic names. Great care, however, is needed in this work, for the same wady may have different names in different parts; two or three hills, a fountain, and several ruins may all have one name--that of the district; and the traveller may misunderstand the Arabic answers to his questions. Mr. Layard tells a story of a traveller, who published, for the benefit of those who might follow in his footsteps, a little vocabulary, but whose own ignorance of the language is shown by the fact that several places on his map are marked with the word Mabarafsh. The fact was, that when the traveller asked his guide the name of a place the man answered Mabarafsh--'I don't know,' and down went this name on the map. In the same traveller's vocabulary 'nose' is put down as snuff; for when he wanted the word for nose he had probably raised his hand, and the Arab supposed he wanted 'snuff.' Under these circumstances, it must have been very satisfactory to Lieutenant Warren, after making a list of 150 places visited or seen on the east of Jordan, to find that wherever Robinson had been before him there was substantial agreement in the spelling. Lieutenant Warren and Dr. Chaplin, of Jerusalem, also obtained many names in the course of a tour from Jisr Damieh to Jisr Mejamia and back; and the former has given us a list of thirty-four Tels in the Jordan valley. More work of the same kind will have to be done, as there is much confusion in the spelling of names; besides which there exist many unnamed cities and ruins on both sides of the Jordan. South of Ammân (the ancient Rabbath-Amman, and afterwards Philadelphia, 2 Sam. xi. and xii.), Lieutenant Warren came upon a piece of elevated country, about four miles square, literally covered with ruins of temples and houses.

The synagogue at Capernaum was only one out of nine synagogues examined in the district north of the Sea of Galilee, and the investigation was so thorough that the plan of the building was made out, and careful drawings made and measurements taken. The result has been to dissipate the idea that the synagogues were barn-like structures, and to prove that they had considerable architectural pretensions.

'They all lie north and south, have three gateways in the southern end, the interior divided into five aisles, by four rows of columns, and the two northern corners formed by double engaged columns. The style of decoration does not always appear to have been the same. At Tel Hum (the strongest claimant for the site of Capernaum) and Kerazeh (Chorazin), Corinthian capitals were found; at Irbid, a mixture of Corinthian and Ionic; whilst Kefr Birim, Meiron, Um el-Amud have capitals of a peculiar character. The faces of the lintels over the gateway are usually ornamented with some device; at Nebartein there is an inscription and representation of the seven-branched candlestick; at Kefr Birim the ornament appears to have been intended for the Paschal lamb; and at Tel Hum there are the pot of manna and lamb. A scroll of vine leaves, with bunches of grapes, is one of the most frequent ornaments. The investigator cannot fail to be struck by their resemblance in plan--accidental or otherwise--to the palaces of Persepolis and to the House of the Forest of Lebanon, built by Solomon.'

For particular description and measurements our architectural readers must be referred to Captain Wilson's paper in Quarterly Statement No. II. These synagogues date either from the Christian era or the centuries immediately following. Mr. R. Phené Spiers, M.R.I.B.A., says, from the third to the sixth centuries, inclusive. The Rev. George Williams, of Cambridge, assigns them to a period prior to the destruction of Jerusalem, both because the depopulation of the country after that event made it almost impossible that they should have been built subsequently, and because the style of ornament so much resembled that of the tombs of the kings (so-called) at Jerusalem. In that case they may have been trodden by the feet of Christ; and the ruins of Capernaum may be remains of the very building concerning which the Jewish elders said, the centurion is worthy--'for he loveth our nation, and hath built us the synagogue.' Yet Dr. Robinson, whose ears and eyes seemed to be open to hear and see all that was really to be heard and seen in connection with sacred topography, did not mention these various ruins till his second journey in 1852, giving then only a brief account of them, while previous to that year there had been no account of them at all.

Another admirable paper of Wilson's, also illustrated with plans, is 'On the Remains of Tombs in Palestine.' Rock-hewn tombs appear to be the earliest in date, and are the tombs most commonly met with, the softer strata of limestone, especially the white chalk in some districts, being well adapted for excavation. Sometimes a natural cavern is made use of, sometimes a square or oblong chamber is cut in the rock, while in a third class one entrance leads into a number of sepulchral chambers; and in all these cases loculi or resting-places for the bodies are either sunk in the surface of the rock much after the manner of a modern grave, or driven into the rock-face like a small tunnel or pigeon-hole. In the so-called tomb of Joshua at Tibneh, after passing through a chamber with fourteen loculi, a smaller one is reached which has only one loculus at its extreme end, an arrangement not noticed elsewhere; the face and sides of the porch are nearly covered with niches for lamps, and round the door are traces of plaster. The tombs of the kings at Jerusalem come into this class, and are described, as well as the tombs of the prophets, the tombs of the Judges, and a large tomb discovered by Lieut. Warren in the Kedron valley. Masonry tombs, which constitute the second class, are few in number, and confined to the northern portion of the country. It is possible that at Tel Hum, where the (basaltic) rock is so hard as to make excavation difficult, this form of tomb was commonly used. If the tombs in which the demoniac lived were of this description, their disappearance is not at all surprising. Besides these two classes of tombs, and their subdivisions, sarcophagi are sometimes found, those at Kedes (Kadesh Naphtali, the city of refuge in the midst of Canaanite strongholds) being the most elaborately ornamented. The material is hard white limestone, almost marble, and the workmanship is excellent: the usual design on the sides is a garland held up in two or more loops by nude figures, with some device over each end and a bunch of grapes hanging from the bottom. Two sarcophagi have been shipped to England by Lieut. Warren, and were exhibited, with other articles, at the Dudley Gallery in the summer of last year.

A paper in these Quarterly Statements, which has greatly pleased the architects is that on the ruined temples of Coele-Syria. In the summer of 1869, Captain Warren (we are glad to notice his promotion) was obliged to take his party to the Lebanon in consequence of their having suffered severely from fever in Jerusalem. While there they occupied themselves in investigating the ruined temples of Coele-Syria and Mount Hermon, and the exhaustive manner in which the work was done, places us in possession of so much information that we may be said to have previously known nothing at all on the subject. The extremely careful tracings (fifteen in number) sent home by Captain Warren are to be seen at the office of the Fund; but two of them, selected by the advice of Mr. Fergusson, are given to subscribers with Captain Warren's complete and detailed account of the temples in Quarterly Statement No. V. The temples of Coele-Syria date from Roman times, and the inscriptions found on them are mostly Greek. The small temples about Mount Hermon appear to be somewhat more ancient, their architecture being of the Ionic order. On the summit of Hermon stands the ruins of a sacellum, i.e., a rectangular building without a roof, which has nothing in its construction in common with the temples on the west below, and which probably had to do with a different and more ancient form of worship. Captain Warren's investigations led him into a discussion of the question of the orientation of heathen temples. It had been surmised by Dr. Robinson and several other writers that the temples about Hermon were turned towards it as to a kibleh, so that the worshippers might face it when they prayed; but now that the directions and angles are taken, it is found that they all have their entrances more or less towards the east, and in no case does the entrance or any side of the building face direct upon the summit of Hermon. The Jewish tabernacle and afterwards the temple at Jerusalem faced the east--according to Josephus--in order that when the sun arose it might send its first rays upon it; according to some of the Jews of the present day, in order that the priest might watch for the first dawn of day in offering up the morning sacrifice.

The principle which accounts for the eastward aspect of the temple at Jerusalem, accounts also for the southward aspect of the synagogues of Galilee: as that was open to the east, so they were open to the temple. It would be a crucial test of this theory to examine the remains of a synagogue said to exist near Beersheba, the only ruin of the kind which is not due north from Jerusalem.

The mention of temples reminds us that on Mount Gerizim numerous excavations were made under the direction of Lieut. Anderson. Within the ruins known as the 'Castle,' the foundations of an octagonal church were laid bare, probably the church known to have been built there by Justinian. On the eastern side of the church is an apse, on the northern side the main entrance, and on each of the others, doors leading to small side chapels. In the interior are the piers of a smaller octagon, apparently intended to carry a dome. The church and castle were found to be built on a rough platform of large stones laid together without mortar, and of this--which may possibly be the platform on which the Samaritan Temple stood--the 'twelve stones,' fabled to have been brought up by the tribes from the bed of the Jordan, form a portion. No trace of large foundations could be found on the southern portion of the small plateau on which the castle stands. Close to the Holy Rock of the Samaritans a number of human remains were dug up, but no clue could be obtained to their age or nationality. The study of the synagogue remains of Galilee, as well as the temples, mosques, churches, tombs, inscriptions, aqueducts, castles, theatres, ruined cities and general aspect of the country, is much facilitated by the series of 350 photographs taken by the two expeditions, which are most of them beautifully executed and very many of them taken for the first time.

We must now follow Captain Warren to Jerusalem, where the longer course of the operations supplies us with larger results for criticism; and the reason for the more extended labours is a reason for our devoting more space to their consideration; it being simply the paramount interest of Jerusalem and the richness of the field Scripturally, historically, and archæologically. The ground on which the city of Jerusalem stands is included in a fork between two ravines, whose point of union is to the south-east of the city, near the Well of Joab, and which, if we trace them backward, may be said to clasp the city, the one on the south and west, the other on the east. The eastern ravine is known as the Valley of Jehoshaphat or of the Kedron, the westernmost as the Valley of Hinnom. On the north side they run up to the level of the northern part of the city; so that Jerusalem is not an isolated hill, but the southern tongue of a great plateau which stretches away northward. This table-land is one of the highest in the country, and Jerusalem is about 2,500 feet above the level of the Mediterranean, while the Dead Sea, only twelve miles to the east, is 1,300 feet below the same. Of the cities of Palestine, Jerusalem alone is thus entrenched with deep ravines--a mountain fastness, with natural defences on every side except the north; and to this circumstance she owed in a great measure her early strength and subsequent greatness. After Joshua's conquest, the aboriginal inhabitants of Palestine, who elsewhere lingered only in the plains, were, able here to maintain a position in the hills;[13] and Joshua, Barak, Gideon, and Saul passed away without seeing the Jebusites conquered. When David became king of all Israel, it was necessary to fix his capital farther north than Hebron, and no city appeared so suitable as Jebus, both on account of its strength and its central position, and perhaps also from the circumstance that it was partly in the tribe of Judah, to which David belonged, and partly in Benjamin, the tribe of Saul. So strong was the citadel that the blind and the lame were thought sufficient to defend the walls; but the steep ascent was climbed by Joab, and David 'took the stronghold of Zion.' Before David's time the men of Judah and the men of Benjamin had gained some partial successes at Jerusalem, and perhaps before the Israelitish invasion the city had experienced varied fortunes in the wars of the aboriginal tribes among themselves. But in the 3,000 years since David's time, how eventful has been its history! From David to Nebuchadnezzar, from Nebuchadnezzar to Pompey and Titus, from Titus to the Crusaders, from Saladin to Sultan Suliman, who built the present walls in 1542, the sieges have been no fewer than twenty; while the city has been four or five times sacked or utterly destroyed.

It is very much in consequence of the repeated destruction of its walls and buildings that its topography has become so much obscured. This could hardly have been the case with any other city of which we had such full descriptions, nor with Jerusalem if ravines had not run through the city as well as round it; the débris has found its way into these intramural valleys, from which its removal was difficult and perhaps inadvisable. The description which Josephus gives of the city is as follows:--

'The city was built upon two hills, which are opposite to one another and have a valley to divide them asunder; at which valley the corresponding rows of houses on both hills end. Of these hills that which contains the upper city is much higher, and in length more direct. Accordingly it was called the citadel by king David (he was the father of that Solomon who built this temple at the first); but it is by us called the Upper Market Place. But the other hill, which was called Akra, and sustains the lower city, is of the shape of a crescent moon. Over against this was a third hill, but naturally lower than Akra, and parted formerly from the other by a broad valley. However, in those times when the Asamoneans reigned, they filled up that valley with earth and had a mind to join the city to the temple. They then took off part of the height of Akra and reduced it to be of less elevation than it was before, that the temple might be superior to it. Now, the valley of the cheesemakers, as it was called, being that which we told you before distinguished the hill of the upper city from that of the lower, extended as far as Siloam; for that is the name of a fountain which hath sweet water in it, and that in great plenty also. But on the outsides these hills are surrounded by deep valleys, and by reason of the precipices to them belonging on both sides, they are everywhere unpassable.[14]

'In section 2 of the same chapter, he says, "It was Agrippa who encompassed the parts added to the old city with this [third] wall, which had been all naked before; for as the city grew more populous it gradually crept beyond its old limits, and those parts of it that stood northward of the temple and joined that hill to the city, made it considerably larger, and occasioned that hill, which is in number the fourth, and is called Bezetha, to be inhabited also."'

It would be easy from these descriptions to trace an ideal map of Jerusalem with its ancient hills and valleys; but such a map would not correspond by a long way with Jerusalem as it is now. The city, as enclosed by its walls to-day, approximates to the form of a parallelogram whose eastern and western sides run north and south, but whose western side as a whole stands more southerly than its eastern side as a whole. From outside the Damascus Gate, near the middle of the north wall, a very marked valley traverses the city, deepening as it runs southward, and terminating by a junction with the Kedron valley outside the south wall, near the Pool of Siloam. The half of the city to the west of this valley is the higher of the two, and is itself highest at its north-western part; the half of the city to the east consists of the Haram esh-Sherêf--a raised platform about 1,500 feet from north to south and 900 feet from east to west, and of about an equal space of streets and houses. The Haram is the southern portion and is separately enclosed with walls, though its entire east wall and two-thirds of the south are coincident, so far, with the walls of the city. The one valley from Damascus Gate gives us two hills within the city; but according to Josephus there were four, and even if we suppose that Bezetha, the 'new town,' last added to the city, was afterwards excluded from it by a narrowing of the compass of the walls, we must still find a second valley to give us a third hill. In the part of the city to the north of the Haram area a valley runs down from Herod's Gate in the north wall towards St. Stephen's Gate in the east wall; but the narrow ridge on the north-east side of this valley is connected with the high ground outside the city, and can hardly be of itself the third hill we are in search of. There must have been a valley then which has become obliterated--in fact, Josephus tells us that the Maccabees did fill up a valley, to connect the city with the temple, in the second century B.C. But inasmuch as the valley is not now apparent, it has to be supplied from conjecture, and in consequence we have had a mass of topographical controversy unequalled for its extent, its confusion, and its bitterness. The valley from the Damascus Gate is usually identified with Josephus's Tyropoeon valley or valley of the cheesemakers; but some writers bring a valley across from the Jaffa Gate, which is near the middle of the west wall, into this north-and-south valley, and call it the Tyropoeon from Jaffa Gate to Siloam. The valley from Damascus Gate, again, is often made to send off a branch to the east across the Haram platform, cutting it sometimes near its northern wall and sometimes farther south than the dome of the rock or Mosque of Omar, which stands on a smaller platform near the centre of the larger. It is disputed, also, which is the valley of Hinnom, which the valley of Kedron, whether Hinnom was not on the east of the city, and whether Gihon did not come down through the middle of the city.

The fate of the valleys determines the fate of the hills, and we are perplexed to know which was Mount Zion, which Moriah, and which Akra, nothing seeming to be certain except that the modern Zion (the western hill) is not the ancient Zion, that the Temple (and therefore Moriah) was somewhere within the Haram enclosure, and that the hill to the east of the present Kedron valley is the Mount of Olives. The position of the hills and valleys determines the course of the streams; for the brook Kedron presumably followed the valley of that name, the Pools of Gihon were in the valley of Gihon (if there was a valley of Gihon); and when Hezekiah 'brought the upper watercourse of Gihon straight down to the west side of the city of David,' the direction of the new channel depends on the position assigned to 'the city of David, which is Zion.'[15] On the position and contour of the hills, again, depends the direction of the ancient walls; for these would in general follow the brow of the hill, except on the north side, where the ground made no descent, while Zion appears to have been separately enclosed, so as to need a siege by itself. Until we know the direction of the walls, we know not where to look for the gates and towers, nor for the sepulchres of the kings, which were most of them within the city of David;[16] nor for the Holy Sepulchre, which was outside the gates. A grand point also is the exact site of the temple, which carries with it that of Antonia, which Josephus says was at the junction of the north and west cloisters, and may also help us to find Solomon's palace, and to determine the position of the king's gardens. It must be evident that, while these points remain unsettled, the history of Jerusalem, from David's age to that of Titus, must lack for us the definiteness and vividness which are so essential to its complete understanding. Of theories we have had enough--they are guesses not without a certain value, but guesses almost in the dark--facts are wanted, to test and correct the theories; and these facts the Palestine Exploration Committee promised to supply.

Captain Warren saw that two courses were open to him, in his endeavours to recover a first thread of the old topography--(1) to obtain the contours of the ground as they existed in olden times; (2) to dig about the supposed site of some remarkable building, in hopes of finding its remains. Both these methods were adopted; and although excavation is not allowed in the sacred places, and the work has been crippled elsewhere for want of funds, enough has been ascertained to settle several disputed points, and to alter the conditions of controversy for time to come. First, as regards the hills and valleys, the Tyropoeon valley, which it was conjectured might contain thirty or forty feet of débris, is found, by excavation, to be filled up in some places to nearly one hundred feet; and instead of presenting an even slope, its western side is nearly level, the final descent being very steep, and the lowest course of the valley being inside the Haram, about sixty feet east of the south-west angle. The Kedron valley is found to contain sixty or eighty feet of loose stone chippings and other débris, forming a sloping bank, with an inclination of about thirty degrees, and having its base resting against the western slope of Olivet. One effect of this accumulation has been to alter the bed of the stream, so far as there is now any stream at all, pushing it forty feet to the east, and raising it thirty-eight feet from its old level. At what must have been the ancient bed of the brook the remains of a masonry wall were touched; between that line and the east of the Haram several other walls were encountered, and at last progress up the hill was stopped--at a point fifty feet east of the Haram--by a massive masonry wall, into which Warren drove a hole five feet, and then had to give up the business. A contribution from M. Clermont Ganneau, of the French Consulate at Jerusalem, affords Mr. Warren an argument in favour of the identity of Kedron and Hinnom. There have always been several reasons for considering the Virgin's Fount, in the Kedron, to be the same with En Rogel, where Adonijah was saluted as king, though many place it at the Well of Joab, lower down. Near to En Rogel was the stone of Zoheleth (1 Kings i. 9), and near to the Virgin's Fount M. Ganneau discovers a rock called Ez Zehwele; so that the statements of Joshua xv. and xviii., which make the border between Judah and Benjamin to pass Zoheleth to En Rogel, and thence up the valley of Hinnom, seem to identify Hinnom with what is now called Kedron. As the Kedron has three names to-day in different parts of its course, there would thus far be no objection to a fourth, but the statements in Joshua seem to us to point to some valley more westward than that now called Kedron. The principal reason for tracing the Tyropoeon from the Jaffa Gate arises from Josephus's description of the valley as an open space or depression within the city, 'at which the corresponding rows of houses on both hills end.' This was held to be more applicable to a valley running from the Jaffa Gate than to that from the Damascus Gate when the slope is so gradual that the rows of houses now run across it without interruption, besides which it probably had formerly a wall on either side of it. Mr. Lewin[17] speaks positively as to the Tyropoeon commencing at the Jaffa Gate, and says it can be traced thence to the Haram by the rise of ground which is still very perceptible on the right hand, as you walk down the street from the gate to the Haram. He makes this valley the boundary of the high town on the north, and puts his first wall on the southern brow of it. It is difficult to see on this hypothesis how the hill of the high town could be 'in length more direct' than the eastern hill, as Josephus says it was; or how the corresponding rows of houses could meet any more readily than near Damascus Gate. However, Mr. Warren, after excavation, tells us that 'a very decided valley runs down from the Jaffa Gate to the Tyropoeon, near Wilson's arch;' and he found under the causeway leading westward from Wilson's arch, vaults and chambers, and a secret passage, at a depth which serves to confirm his view. There is no disputing facts, though it seems to us still questionable whether this valley is any part of the Tyropoeon of Josephus. The valley running south-east from Herod's Gate, in the north-east part of the north wall, proves to be longer and deeper than any theorist had imagined, running into the Kedron at a point between the north-east angle of the Haram and the Golden Gate, and being filled in with more than 100 feet of débris. The Pool of Bethesda, which is 360 feet in length, is imbedded in this valley, and stretches across it, having its ends formed by the rocky sides of the valley, and its sides built up of masonry; and since it is found lined with concrete, it must have been a reservoir, and not the fosse of Antonia, which Robinson supposed it to be.[18]

The valley which Simon Maccabeus filled up[19] is made by Mr. Lewin to coincide with the northern half of what is usually called the Tyropoeon--the part from Damascus Gate, down to near Wilson's arch. Other writers identify it with a supposed branch of the Tyropoeon, curving to the east across the Haram. Josephus tells us that when Pompey beseiged Jerusalem he took up his position on the north of the temple, in the only part where an assault was practicable; and that even there the temple was defended by high towers, and a trench, and by a deep ravine. The position which various writers give to this ravine depends upon their idea as to the site of the temple. Mr. Fergusson[20] thinks that the valley of the Asamoneans was a 'tranverse cut, separating the hill Bezetha from the Akra or citadel, on the temple hill.' Mr. Thrupp[21] allows a valley on the north side of the temple, and reminds us that traces of a valley debouching into the valley of Kedron, near the middle of the eastern wall of the Haram, and which seemed to have been artificially filled up, were detected by the late Dr. Shultz. Shultz identifies these traces as those of the valley filled up by the Asamoneans; but Thrupp holds him to be mistaken in doing so. Mr. Sandie[22] puts forth the recognition of such a valley as the special characteristic of his view of ancient Jerusalem; but he places it south of the dome of the rock. He moreover identifies it with 'the ravine called Kedron' (τὴν Κεδρῶνα καλουμένην φάραγγα), which Josephus tells us was overlooked by the north-east wall of the temple,[23] and by which he does not mean the valley of Kedron, since he always calls the latter 'Kedron' simply. Mr. Lewin, again, makes this ravine to be 'the slip of ground between the temple and the city wall, reaching from Bethesda on the north to Ophla on the south,' i.e., the eastern side of the present Haram platform, which is, or was, the west bank of the present Kedron valley. It is difficult to see how this could have been a ravine at all; but Mr. Lewin translates 'so-called Kedron ravine,' and seems to think the expression implies that Josephus did not consider the term 'ravine' quite legitimate. Even if this were so, the illegitimacy of the designation might result from the circumstance that what was once a ravine had since been filled up by the Maccabeans and by Pompey.[24] But we must come to facts.

First of all, Captain Warren tells us that there was no ravine south of the dome of the rock, for 'the crest of the rocky spur runs from the north-west angle of the Dome-of-Rock platform in a south-east direction to the triple gate in the south wall; and at these two points, and in the line between them, the rock is at the surface.' Secondly, in December, 1868, when the displacement of a stone by the rains enabled Captain Warren to descend beneath the surface of the Haram, he found a souterrain running east and west, in the line of the northern edge of the Mosque platform, the southern side of it being scarped rock, on which the wall supporting the northern edge of the Mosque platform is built, but the rock itself appearing to 'shelve down rapidly to the north.' In the following month Captain Warren ventured to suggest on plan (lithographed plan 32) the possible course of a valley coming from the Gate of the Inspector in the Tyropoeon, and running past the north-western corner of the Dome-of-Rock, out eastward through the Birket Israil (Pool of Bethesda). The souterrain may, as Captain Warren observes, be claimed by one party as the ditch on the northern wall of the temple, and by another as the northern ditch of Antonia; and the valley--which owes its depth in one part of its course to what is doubtingly called a 'natural or artificial ditch'--will of course be claimed as that of the Asamoneans.

It is thus, in our opinion, rendered probable that the ground to the west of that valley which runs from Damascus Gate constituted the old town, the φρούριον of David's time, the upper market-place of the days of Josephus; that the dome of the rock and the space to the south of it represent the old Temple-hill; that to the north of this was the valley of the Asamoneans; that between the latter and the valley from Herod's Gate was the city of David, or Zion,[25] and that north-east of the last-named valley was Bezetha. The name Zion got transferred to the Temple-hill, or was made to include it, before or during the times of the Maccabees, probably after the filling-up of the intervening valley, and in the early centuries of the Christian era was transferred to the western hill, which, after the Akra was cut down, was the highest hill of the city.[26] Certainly there is still room for some controversy on these points, and Captain Warren contributes something to the discussion, in a long paper on the 'Comparative Holiness of Mounts Zion and Moriah,' in which he argues that Zion was considered holy when the ark was there, in David's time; that after the ark (and the holiness) were transferred to Moriah, the name Zion got transferred also, and that Josephus refrains from using the term Zion because he is aware of this confusion.

If the Tyropoeon valley extended from Damascus Gate southward, and the city of David was on the eastern side of it, north of the temple, then the water which Hezekiah diverted from its course, and brought down to the west side of the city of David (2 Chron. xxxii. 30), and yet into the city of Jerusalem (2 Kings xx. 20) was probably brought in at Damascus Gate, and ran towards the Kedron, either on the west side of the temple, or by the Maccabean valley, on the northern side. In the southern half of the Tyropoeon valley, outside the west wall of the Haram, Captain Warren has found, at a depth of seventy or eighty feet, a rock-cut aqueduct, twelve feet deep and six feet wide, with round rock-cut pools at intervals, and shafts which indicate that pure water was drawn from it. As Hezekiah brought the stream down from 'the upper watercourse of Gihon,' this discovery has a direct bearing on the question of the position of 'the upper pool,' and of 'Gihon, in the valley,'where Solomon was anointed king; but as the upper part of the Tyropoeon has not been excavated, it remains uncertain whether the water came in by Damascus Gate or Jaffa Gate, and consequently what position of Zion is favoured by the finding of this aqueduct.

The search for the old walls of the city has only been partially carried out. Here, again, we have Josephus's explicit description, and the usual differences among the commentators.

'The city of Jerusalem was fortified with three walls, on such parts as were not encompassed with unpassable valleys; for in such places it had but one wall.... The old wall began on the north at the tower called Hippicus, and extended as far as the Xistus, a place so called, and then, joining to the Council-house, ended at the west cloister of the temple. But if we go the other way westward, it began at the same place, and extended through a place called Bethso to the Gate of the Essenes; and after that it went southward, having its bending above the fountain Siloam, where it also bends again towards the east at Solomon's pool, and reaches as far as a certain place which they called Ophlas, were it was joined to the eastern cloister of the temple. The second wall took its beginning from that gate which they call Gennath, which belonged to the first wall; it only encompassed the northern quarter of the city, and reached as far as the tower Antonia. The beginning of the third wall was at the tower Hippicus, whence it readied as far as the north quarter of the city, and the tower Psephinus, and then was so far extended till it came over against the monuments of Helena (which Helena was Queen of Adiabene, the daughter of Izates); it then extended farther to a great length, and passed by the sepulchral caverns of the kings, and bent again at the tower of the corner, at the monument which is called the monument of the Fuller, and joined to the old wall at the ravine called Kedron.'[27]

As many writers make the northern part of the first wall to have run from the Jaffa Gate eastward, Captain Warren spent some time in excavating in the Muristan, a large open space in the city, the old burial-place of the Knights Hospitallers; but he found 'nothing but confusion in the shape of old walls running at one another in all directions.' At Wilson's arch, however, near the Haram wall, and nearly due east from the Jaffa Gate, he discovered an old city gateway at a great depth. If we could find traces of the tower Hippicus we should come upon the first and third walls together, and similarly the gate Gennath would put us on the line of the first and second walls. The theories of some writers compel them to put Hippicus at the Jaffa Gate, where they think they see its representative in the present Castle of David. But we agree with Mr. Fergusson, that the remains called Kasr Jalud at the north-west corner of the city suit better with Josephus's description. To this point Captain Warren has not yet been able to give much attention; but the so-called Gennath Gate was examined both by Wilson and by Warren, and pronounced by the former to be of comparatively modern construction, by the latter to be ancient, 'especially as its style is Roman.' The gate rests in made earth.

The Damascus Gate is built of two very different styles of masonry, one of them apparently very old; and it suits the views of several writers, who differ as to the course of the first wall, that this gate and the portion of wall immediately east of it should be part of the second wall of the city.[28] At the Damascus Gate excavation brought to light 'a very ancient wall ten feet six inches in thickness, built with bevelled stones similar to those of the Jews' Wailing Place;' but the wall would seem to be built out of old materials, since stones of more recent date were found among them; and at the foot of the wall lay a stone with a Templar's cross on it.

The third wall has probably almost or quite disappeared, for when Hadrian was re-erecting the walls in A.D., 136, he would not think it necessary to go out so far; the population had diminished, and to construct armour without, so disproportionate to the shrunken body within, would have been simply ridiculous. If any part of the third wall remained, we might suppose it to be at the northern part of the present east wall; but here excavation shows that there has been 'no destruction of extensive buildings so far north as St. Stephen's Gate,' that the wall itself is 'of no very ancient date,' and that 'of the city wall to the east, the north-east angle of the Haram area is the first sign from the northern end of anything ancient in appearance.'

Perhaps there is here a little room for error; for where the rock is high, the absence of much débris may not imply that there has been no great destruction of buildings; but simply that the rubbish has found its way to the valleys or was not suffered to accumulate.

South of the Haram wall, the hill, which is now chiefly occupied by small vegetable gardens, in terraces of six to ten feet high, must have been at one time covered with houses, for every shaft sunk brought to light remains of buildings, drains, scarped and cut rock, and antiquities of various dates. A cavern cut out of the rock, appears to have been at first a dyer's shop and afterwards a stable, while early Christian glass and pottery was found in a drain above it. Tradition relates that St. James was cast over the outer wall of the temple enclosure, and that 'a fuller took the club with which he pressed the clothes, and brought it down on the head of the just one.' This hill is frequently identified with Ophel, where Jotham and Manasseh built (2 Chron. xxvii. 3; xxxiii. 14; Neh, iii. 26, 27; xi. 21), though whether Ophel referred to the whole of the swelling hill or to a tumour-like tower in some part of it was not certain.[29] In this district Warren has discovered a massive wall, from twelve to fourteen feet thick, which abuts on the Haram wall (but does not bond into it) at a point twelve feet six inches west of the south-east angle of the Haram, which runs first of all sixty feet due south, and then takes a bend to the south-west, in which direction it runs for 700 feet, and then ends abruptly. The wall is still from forty to sixty feet in height, and the rock is scarped for thirty feet below it, while solid towers of masonry are found at intervals along its course. This discovery will have to be taken into consideration by those who bring the south wall of the city up from Siloam, and make it join the third wall at a point 600 feet from the south-west angle of the present Haram, and therefore more than 300 feet from the point where this wall abuts. The curious rock-cut connection which Warren found between the Virgin's Fount and a shaft opening from Ophel, would seem to be a device for supplying the inhabitants of this district with water, in a secret way; reminding us of the work of Hezekiah, and possibly being of the same date.

A question of paramount interest is the site of the successive temples of Solomon, Zerubabel and Herod. It is universally allowed that the temple stood on that hill which we call Moriah, and within the present sacred area; but while Josephus describes it as a square of 600 feet (1 stadium), in the side, the dimensions of the Haram are, according to Catherwood, 1,520 feet on the east side, 1,617 feet on the west, 1,020 on the north, and 932 on the south. The way being thus open for conjecture, we have had the usual differences of opinion, and the temple has been variously placed at the south-west angle, the centre of the area, the southern half of the area, the northern half, or has even been made coincident with the entire Haram. A few shafts and galleries would probably settle this question, and in showing us the foundations of the temple, give us the key to most of the old topography; but unfortunately the reservation made by the Turkish Government has compelled Captain Warren to labour only outside the enclosure. Still, as there was reason to think that one or more of the Haram walls or angles might coincide in position with those of the temple, there was room for discovery by exterior examination. The theory of Catherwood and of De Vogüé, that the whole of the area belonged to the temple, may be dismissed as being inconsistent with the measurements of Josephus. The discovery of the transverse valley and of the prolongation of the valley from Herod's Gate appear to be fatal to Williams's view, that the temple stood in the northern half of the Haram and stretched all across it.

A favourite theory is that of Fergusson, Lewin, and others, that the temple occupied the south-west angle of the area, its south and west walls coinciding with those of the Haram for a distance of 600 feet from the corner. The chief positive evidence for this view consists in the fact that the south-west angle is the only right angle of the present walls, that some of the stones existing in that part of the wall to-day are so immense as to justify Josephus's description of stones 'immovable for all time' and that the spring stones of an arch discovered by Robinson in the western wall, commencing about forty feet from the south-west angle, would be in the centre of the great Stoa Basilica of the temple. This cloister, according to the Jewish historian, was on the south wall, overhanging the valley, and communicated by steps with the upper city.[30] The arch of Robinson was often assumed to be the first of a series, and 'Robinson's bridge or viaduct' was attributed by Lewin to Solomon, and identified as that which was broken away by the followers of Aristobulus, in Pompey's time.[31] Signor Pierotti had scratched up a few feet of earth, and not finding any trace of a pier, declared that there could not have been a bridge. The excavations of Capt. Warren have shown that the south-west angle of the Haram is buried for about ninety feet, while in the Tyropoeon valley the rock from the western side rather rises than falls until it is within 200 feet of the sanctuary wall, and then shelves down very rapidly. The actual pier of an arch has been discovered, with three courses of stones in situ, twelve feet two inches in thickness, commencing at forty-one feet six inches from the wall, within a few inches of the span assigned by Robinson. The length of the spring-stones is given by Wilson as fifty feet, and the pier is found to measure fifty-one feet six inches, and has its northern end eighty-nine feet from the south-west angle, nearly corresponding to the spring stones. The stones of the pier are precisely similar to those of the south-west angle, and presumably of the same age; but the inference that they are therefore of the age of Solomon is checked by the next discovery. Stretching between the pier and the sanctuary wall is a pavement, on which some of the fallen voussoirs of the arch are resting, but underneath the pavement are twenty-three feet of débris, covering two older voussoirs, which have crushed into the arched roof of an aqueduct which may be older still--the aqueduct previously spoken of in connexion with Hezekiah. These historical strata seem to yield evidence as follows:--

1. The winding rock-cut aqueduct was constructed.

2. The west Haram wall was afterwards built, the aqueduct arched over, and a bridge thrown across from the Haram area to the western side of the valley.

3. The arch of the bridge fell (two voussoirs still remain), smashing in part of the arch of the aqueduct.

4. Débris began to fill up the valley, a pavement was constructed upon it, which still remains, about twenty feet above the top of the aqueduct; and shafts were constructed at intervals from the pavement down to the aqueduct, in order to obtain water readily. Another arch was built.

5. The arch fell, and now rests upon the pavement.

6. Débris began to fill up the valley over the fallen arch, the pier of which standing out was removed, all except the three lowest courses.

7. Houses were built on a level twenty feet above the pavement.

8. These houses fell into ruin and the débris accumulated to its present level, viz., forty-five feet above the pavement.

No remains of any second arch of the supposed viaduct have been found; but three arches with a staircase to west would have sufficed to bridge the gulf, and there does exist a colonnade in ruins in continuation of the line of Robinson's arch. It is part of the view which places the temple at the south-west angle, that the three other gates and roadways mentioned by Josephus as connecting its west side with the city and suburbs[32] should be traceable between Robinson's arch and a point 600 feet from the south-west angle. The first of these gates--apparently the most northern--'led to the king's palace, and went to a passage over the intermediate valley.' It is remarkable that at a distance of 600 feet from the south-west angle we have a causeway which crosses the valley, while from this point the western wall no longer follows the same direction, but inclines slightly to the westward. This causeway commences with an arch nearly as large as Robinson's, discovered by Dr. Barclay, of the United States, measured by Captain Wilson, and known as Wilson's arch. This arch is now found to be in a perfect condition and elevated 120 feet above the lowest part of the valley, while the causeway to west is a succession of vaults on vaults, and is about eighty feet above the rock. The passage--the way to the king's palace--has also apparently come to light in the form of a secret tunnel, which has been traced westward for 250 feet, at which point it is under the house of Joseph Effendi, and is used as a cistern.

Of the two intermediate gates, the southern should be by calculation 264 feet from the south-west angle of the Haram area; and at 270 feet there is in the Haram wall an enormous lintel, which was first brought prominently into notice in this century by Dr. Barclay, in his 'City of the Great King.' The bottom of the lintel is five feet five inches above the surface of the ground, and Warren has ascertained that the sill is about thirty feet below the lintel, while the road up to it seems to have been by a causeway raised forty-six feet above the rock. We have, then, in the western portion of the Haram wall two bridges and one gate; but the most persevering search has not been rewarded by the discovery of any second gate between the two bridges. Moreover, the spring of Wilson's arch is seven feet above that of Robinson, its pier is for the first nineteen feet built up of rough blocks (that of Robinson's of smooth stones), and the voussoirs are of a style said to be of the later days of the Roman empire; though, like the more southern arch, it appears to have had a predecessor on the same spot.

Of the new evidence furnished by the explorations, the balance seems, after all, to tell against the south-west angle as the site of the temple. It has already been stated that the original bed of the Tyropoeon valley comes out through the south wall of the Haram, about sixty feet from the south-west angle; and it is only stating the fact in other words to say that for sixty feet the south wall is carried up the slope of the modern Mount Zion. In the other direction, if we measure off 600 feet from the south-west angle, to find the south-east corner of the temple, the wall at that point rests on the highest part of Mount Moriah, which is not cut by the south front at all. An examination of the lithographed plan, No. 14, makes such a position seem an unlikely one for the original wall; for it would be more like building in the valley than on the hill, would take more material, and be destitute of symmetry. Next, the rock-cut aqueduct running down the Tyropoeon has one of its pools half cut through by the west wall; and the north part of the aqueduct, roofed with flat slabs, appears to be older than the south, which is vaulted; everything favouring the conclusion that the aqueduct originally followed the course of the valley, and that when the wall was built the part of the aqueduct lying outside of it was left intact, and new lines of arched passage built to connect the older portions. Unless, therefore, the aqueduct is of pre-Solomonian age, the west wall was no part of Solomon's Temple at least, though it may have been included in Herod's.

Add to all this, that the stones at the south-west angle resemble those at the north-east, and that a temple in the south-west angle would not face due east, and the evidence in favour of this position is by no means conclusive.

The courses of stone in the south wall usually run from three feet six inches to three feet nine inches in height; but between the Double Gate and the Triple Gate there is a course described by Captain Wilson, from five feet ten inches to six feet one inch high. Captain Warren found that this course, with some breaks, is continued to the south-east angle, and thence runs north along the east wall for twenty-four feet. The length of this course in the south wall is 600 feet; and the coincidence of this number with the measurement of the temple cloisters, is enough to suggest that we may here have a clue, especially since, through the rising ground under the Triple Gate, this is the first course of stones which could be carried uninterruptedly through from east to west. Captain Warren, following this clue, not only found, after numerous examinations underground, that a perpendicular dropped from the most westerly stone of this course would pretty well divide the wall into two parts of different character, but that the rough stones to the west of this line resemble those at the north-east angle, thus far favouring the conclusion that these were the parts added by Herod.[33]

The Triple Gate is in the middle of this six feet course of stones, thus agreeing with the description of Josephus, that the south front of the temple had 'gates in its middle,' an expression which some have tried to reconcile with the existence of the Huldah and Triple Gates, at about equal distances from the angles and from one another, or have construed as applying to the Huldah Gate alone, which is, however, 365 feet from the south-west angle.

Under the Triple Gate the rock, as already stated, is highest, and notwithstanding that the slope is greater to the east than to the west, there would thus be an appearance of symmetry in the wall which it could not have if standing entirely west of the Triple Gate. It is worth notice also that at the Huldah Gate, where, on this view, the temple would terminate to west, the wall of the city, coming up from the south, now abuts, indicating that the south-west angle of the Haram is less ancient than the original city wall at this part, and the city wall less ancient than the south Haram wall east of Huldah Gate.

Again, the wall of Ophel, which commences at the south-east angle, and thus favours the view we are considering, runs sixty feet south, then 700 feet south-west, and terminates abruptly at a point nearly due south of Huldah Gate (see lithographic plan, No. 30), to which, it would seem possible, its return course may have run. Even Fergusson's argument for the south-west angle--that the south wall of the platform which now surrounds the Mosque of Omar runs parallel to the south wall of the Haram, at a distance of exactly 600 feet, and for a length of 600 feet--is nearly as much in favour of the south-east angle; and Lewin's argument that Josephus's πύλας κατὰ μέσον must refer to a double doorway, and therefore to the present Huldah Gate, is balanced by Warren's discovery that originally the so-called Triple Gate was a double tunnel.

It is often urged that the sub-structures known as Solomon's stables, in the south-east corner of the Haram, are of too slight a construction to bear the cloisters of the temple, and too modern, as well as too slight;[34] but the floor of these vaults is on a level with the six feet course of stones previously mentioned--above which level few stones remain in situ--and any previous sub-structures would not have survived the destruction of the east and south retaining walls. Between the Triple Gate and the south-east angle is the postern known as the Single Gate, with its sill on a level with the sill of the Triple Gate, but itself of modern construction. Below this gate, and below the vaults within the Haram, at this corner, Warren discovered a passage for carrying into the Kedron some liquid, and yet wholly distinct from the water channels under the Triple Gate. Underground Jerusalem so abounds in aqueducts and passages that it would not be of much force to urge that this channel conveyed the blood from the altar: yet the suggestion may be set against any similar one in favour of another site.

Finally, on this point, at the south-east angle, which some had thought to be modern, the foundations are about eighty feet beneath the surface, the stones are in situ, and some of them have Phoenician masons' marks painted and chiselled on them. That the stones are in situ is proved by the circumstance that a small depth of débris, which had been shovelled away to make room for the lowest tier, still remains close by, and has its layers sloping inwards. That the wall is ancient is thought to be evidenced by the Phoenician characters, which seem certainly to point to pre-Roman times, and possibly to the time when Solomon engaged the workmen of Hiram, King of Tyre, to build the temple.

Still, neither is the evidence conclusive here. While the stones at the north-east angle differ from those at the south-east, and there are several breaks and irregularities in the masonry of the east wall, Phoenician marks--though too much blurred to be deciphered--are found at the north-east angle also; the south-east angle is not a right angle, but measures 92 deg. 5 min. at the surface, and 92 deg. 25 min. at the foundation; at 105 feet from the corner there is a break in the character of the masonry; only the first 120 feet of wall are in the same straight line, and then there is a bend to the north-east.

The platform, called the Haram area, is nearly on one level all over, and near its centre is a second platform, about eighteen feet higher, on which stands the Mosque of Omar, covering the Sakhra, or sacred rock of the Mahometans, which measures sixty feet by fifty or fifty-five, and is said by them to be a morsel of Paradise. Thrupp and Falconer suppose it to be the rock or part of the rock on which stood the tower of Antonia; Fergusson maintains it to be the Holy Sepulchre, over which Constantine built a church, and Professor Willis identifies it with the threshing-floor of Araunah, and therefore with the site of the temple. As this rock is the highest point of Mount Moriah, and contains a cave with an opening to a deeper recess which has not been explored, it was sure thus to suggest itself as the place of the altar whence, according to the Talmud, the blood and offal of the sacrifices were drained off to the Kedron. As excavations have not been permitted within the sacred area, it has not been possible to put this theory to any test; nor can Warren's accidental discovery of souterrains along the northern edge of the platform, and of a natural or artificial ditch crossing beyond its north-west corner, be considered as settling the point either way. It may be worth a thought that the summit of Moriah may have been a 'high place' for heathen worship before it occurred to David to build a temple for God; that on that very account it would perhaps be avoided by the builders of the temple; and that if Araunah worshipped on any high place at all, his threshing-floor would not be on the same spot.

Captain Warren is never forward to theorise, but as a provisional hypothesis during his earlier excavations he favoured the south-east angle as the probable site of the temple; and now, after three or four years of investigation, while he has come to no conclusion, he inclines to a position nearly coincident with the Dome-of-Rock platform. As Josephus states the stones in Solomon's Cloister--the eastern side of the temple--to have been twenty cubits long and six cubits high, and Warren has not found any stones of these dimensions at any point where he has explored, he naturally thinks the cloister may be in the part he has not explored, viz., a space of 600 feet between the Golden Gate and the south-east angle, where a wide Mahometan cemetery makes operations very difficult.

'Place the temple here, nearly coinciding with the Dome-of-the Rock Platform, and it appears to suit exactly. It has the valley to the north; it has the raised platform of the dome of the rock, which is just about the height of the inner court above the outer; it has the unexplored 600 feet of wall south of the Golden Gate, and overlooking the Kedron. But it will be asked, "What about the south-east angle, with its sub-structures and its walls, with Phoenician characters inscribed thereon?" I think it was Solomon's palace.'

One of the objects of the Palestine Exploration Fund is to improve our knowledge of Jewish archæology, about which we have known next to nothing. The discoveries in Assyria show us what may be expected; 'for not only have we been able (says Mr. Layard) through the discoveries of Sir Henry Rawlinson, Dr. Hincks, and others (Mr. Layard might have added his own name), to read their written history, and trace their connection with other nations and races, but by the aid of the sculptures we can almost learn the details of the private and domestic life of the Assyrian people--their dress, their arms, and their religious ceremonies.' If similar discoveries could be made in Palestine, the greatest light would be thrown upon the political and domestic history of the Jews, and most important illustrations of the Holy Scriptures would be obtained. Such discoveries are indeed considered unlikely, since the Jewish law forbade the representation of the human form in sculpture or painting; but the Jews did not always scrupulously observe their law; besides which, the objection does not relate to the discovery of pottery, glass, coins, metal work, remains of architecture, &c. It must be confessed, indeed, that the legendary golden throne of King Solomon, with its eagles, and lions, and doves, has not been found, and the sceptres of the kings of Judah and Israel have not even been searched for by the explorers; moreover, most of their labour has been expended in uncovering massive structures, which cannot be brought home; yet still, when Mr. Macgregor returned from Jerusalem, he brought with him nine cases of objects incidentally lighted upon by the excavators, and in the summer of 1869 the Society was able to open a Museum of Palestinean Antiquities. The collection included lamps, pottery, glass, coins, weapons, tesselated pavement, sculpture, sarcophagi, geological specimens, and a collection of stone weights; besides photographs, and tracings, maps, and models. Three glass lamps, of curious construction, with several brigs of red pottery, and a cooking dish, glazed inside, were found in the rock-cut chambers and passages leading from the Virgin's Fountain up through the hill of Ophel. The whole of the ground of Ophel, between the south Haram wall and the Pool of Siloam, has been built over, and lamps of a particular type have been found there--two of them with Greek inscriptions--and in no case has any known Arabic pottery been found. On the other hand, at the Birket Israil--so-called Pool of Bethesda, where Warren dug through thirty-five feet of rubbish, and brought up a piece of the concrete bottom--the pottery is totally different. It is in many cases highly glazed, and has patterns on it, and when it is unglazed it has bands of red or brown, or other marks, very similar in appearance to the specimens of pottery found at Athens and Melos; and yet among this there came to light two pieces of glazed jars with raised Arabic or Cufic inscriptions, one of them being the usual invocation to Allah.

Some of the pottery found is older than the south-east portion of the Haram wall, for on the rock there rests an accumulation of eight or ten feet of a clay mould, which, from its slope, appears to have been cut through for the purpose of laying the stones on a solid foundation, and this clay abounds in pottery, broken into fragments. The rock at the south-east angle is very soft for the first two or three feet of depth, and at three feet to the east of the angle a hole was found scooped out of it, one foot in diameter and one foot in depth, in which was a little earthenware jar, standing upright, as though it had been purposely placed there. Warren suggested at the time (February, 1869) that the purpose may have been religious or superstitious, and that in such cases inscriptions might be found upon the pottery, if the jars were properly cleaned. The suggestion has borne fruit in his own experience. Among the fragments of pottery which for a depth of about two inches covers the rich loam overlying the rock at the south-east angle some handles of jars were observed to have a stamp on them, and on this account some specimens were collected. After his return to England, in 1870, Captain Warren, getting these out, and dusting the mud off them, observed Phoenician letters, some of which have since been read by Dr. Birch, of the British Museum, as lemelek Zepha (to the king Zepha), and which exactly resemble those of the Moabite stone, of which all the world has heard. The significance of this discovery will be better understood after we have considered that of the Moabite stone itself.

The paleographical results achieved by the Palestine Exploration Fund, when viewed by the side of the many and varied works in other departments, may seem to be small; but Mr. Deutsch, when speaking at Oxford,[35] was not wrong in desiring his hearers to count the latter, but to weigh the former. In a minaret near Nablus, immured upside down, is an inscribed slab that once belonged to a synagogue, which, though it does not seem to have been seen by Robinson, was copied by Shultz in 1844, and published by Rödiger; and again copied by Wildenbruck, and published by Blau. Finally, in 1860, it was copied and explained by Rosen, whose work left that of his predecessors far behind. Yet even he does not give all the characters, nor are they so accurately reproduced as would seem to be absolutely necessary in the case of the oldest known Samaritan monument; nor has he been able more than to conjecture as to the reading of the very beginning of the tablet. A photograph, taken under Captain Wilson, has rendered everything clear, and it turns out that, owing to the difficulty of the position in which the decipherer is necessarily placed, it was utterly impossible to perceive certain marks on the stone itself which are quite clear in the photograph. The tablet itself exhibits ten lines, the first eight of which contain the Ten Commandments, according to the Samaritan recension, in an abbreviated form. The ninth forms a portion of the celebrated Samaritan interpolation after the Ten Commandments (from Deut. xxvii. 2--7; and ix. 30)--'And it shall be on the day when ye shall pass over Jordan ... on Mount Gerizim ... and thou shalt build there an altar unto the Lord thy God.' The last line contains the formula from Exodus, of frequent use in Samaritan worship, viz., 'Arise, O Lord; return, O Lord!'[36] Another photograph gives the famous inscription on the lintel of a ruined synagogue at Kefr Birim, in Galilee, with greater clearness than is represented in M. Renan's lithograph, taken from a cast, and is even clearer than the original itself, certain blurred characters of which it was next to impossible to distinguish on the glaring white surface. The gist of the inscription is a prayer for 'peace upon this place and all the places of Israel,' and an indication of the builder's name. In addition to these, some dozens of inscriptions have been copied--in the north of Palestine by Wilson; at Jerash and in the Lebanon by Warren; and in the Haram area and elsewhere by Mr. E. H. Palmer. Ancient characters have been ferreted out, and copied from the walls of Sidon; and a seal, bearing the inscription, 'Haggai, son of Shebaniah,' and dating as far back as the Maccabean period, has been found under the buried pavement near the south-west corner of the Haram. The red-paint characters at the south-east angle of the Haram were examined by Mr. Deutsch on the spot, and pronounced to be partly letters, partly numerals, and partly special masons' or quarry signs. Some of them were recognisable at once as well-known Phoenician characters; others, hitherto unknown in Phoenician epigraphy, Mr. Deutsch had the rare satisfaction of being able to identify on absolutely undoubted antique Phoenician structures in Syria, such as the primitive sub-structures of the harbour at Sidon. Similar marks at the north-east angle afford evidence that the stones of the Haram wall were shaped at the quarry, inasmuch as the paint in one instance has run, and the trickling is upwards with reference to the present position of the stone. Evidence to the same effect is furnished by the marginal drafts, which, present no appearance of pattern or design when the wall is regarded as a whole, but only when each stone is taken by itself.

The paleographic discovery of paramount interest is that of the Moabite stone, with a memorial inscription in what is known to scholars as the 'Phoenician' character, and belonging, there is little doubt, to the first half of the ninth century B.C. In August, 1868, the Rev. F. A. Klein, a Prussian clergyman, in the service of the Church Missionary Society at Jerusalem, in the course of a journey from es-Salt to Kerak, had the good fortune to be shown this monument at Dhibân near Arnon, the old border of Moab. The stone was lying among the ruins, perfectly free and exposed to view, the inscription uppermost, and was in excellent preservation. Mr. Klein ascertained it to be one metre thirteen centimetres in height, seventy centimetres in breadth and thirty-five in thickness, rounded at the upper and lower corners,[37] and containing thirty-four lines of writing. Circumstances prevented his copying more than 'a few words from several lines at random;' and when afterwards M. Clermont-Ganneau, of the French Consulate at Jerusalem, Captain Warren, of the Palestine Exploration Fund, and others, interested themselves to obtain 'squeezes,' the Arabs resented the action of foreigners, quarrelled among themselves, and lighting a fire about the stone poured water on it and broke it to pieces. An Arab employed by M. Ganneau, who when the quarrel arose was engaged in taking a squeeze, tore off the wet impression in rags, and springing on his horse managed to escape, though not without a spear wound in his leg. Through the energy of Captain Warren and M. Ganneau better squeezes were afterwards obtained of the larger fragments, and at a later date the fragments themselves came to hand, so that of 1,000 letters which it is estimated the stone contained, 669 have been recovered.

While the materials remain imperfect, it is impossible to obtain a complete translation of the inscription, though various attempts have been made. M. Ganneau's second translation of June, 1870, differs widely from that which he put forth five months previously; but then his only copy of certain parts of the stone was certain torn rags (lambeaux frifés et chiffonnés), and his method of procedure with the fragments of the stone is thus described:--'La plus grande partie de ces morceaux, même les plus minimes, peut être mise en place facilement, en tenant compte de la correspondance horizontale et verticale des séries de caractères: il suffit de procéder comme pour déterminer la position géographique d'un point par l'intersection des lignes de longitude et de latitude.'[38] Translations have also been attempted by Professor Schlottman, of Halle, Professor Nöldeke, and in this country by Dr. Neubauer; while Mr. Deutsch has consistently asked scholars and the public to exercise patience and wait till the full materials for a translation should come to hand. The general drift of the inscription, however, is clear enough. It appears to be a contemporaneous record from the Moabite point of view of 2 Kings i. 1, set up by King Mesha, commencing with a brief record of himself and his father, commemorating warlike successes over the Israelites, explaining how he rebuilt and improved a number of well-known Moabite cities, and finishing apparently with some further reference to war. The names of Israel, Omri, Chemosh, occur up and down, and the monarch seems to have conceived himself under the special guidance of his god, who was thought to signify his will that this or that city should be attacked, and who was obeyed implicitly. Historically, therefore, the monument is interesting, since it is an unexpected record of a nation now passed away, and adds a trifle to our knowledge.

Paleographically, the stone is of far greater value, and happily of nearly as much value in its mutilated condition, as it would have been if perfect. It is the very oldest Semitic lapidary record of importance yet discovered, the most ancient specimen of the alphabetic writing still in common use amongst us--a century and a half earlier than any other inscription in the same Phoenician character, and three centuries earlier than any other such inscription of any length. Its significance in this respect is, however, only in process of being studied, and uniformity of opinion has not yet been arrived at. The names of the Hebrew letters are all significant of certain objects--aleph, bêth, gimel, daleth, for instance = ox, house, camel, door, &c.; and it has been maintained by Semitic scholars that the letters themselves were originally slight and abridged representations of the visible objects, the resemblance being more clearly seen in the older Phoenician than in the later Phoenician, the Assyrian or square character, and archaic Greek.[39] Mr. Deutsch, who was so careful in the matter of translation, was bold to express himself here, and to assert from the evidence of the Moabite stone that 'the more primitive the characters the simpler they become; not, as often supposed, the more complicated, as more in accordance with some pictorial prototype.'[40] This view is controverted by Professor Rawlinson, in the Contemporary Review for August, 1870, and, as it appears to us, successfully; for while the later characters in some instances present a greater complication to the eye, they are far simpler to the mind as soon as you imagine yourself engaged in writing them and exerting the volition separately for each stroke. 'In samech for instance, apparently the most complicated of the later letters, a gradual diminution in the number of strokes may be traced from first to last. Originally the letter was written like an early Greek xi--thus, [hand printed character], with four distinct strokes; then the four were reduced to two by changing the three horizontal bars into a zigzag, which could be written without taking the hand from the paper, and adding a vertical bar beneath it; finally, the vertical bar was attached to one end of the zigzag, and thus made a continuation of it, so that a single continuous stroke sufficed for the whole letter.... In like manner, the original zain required three distinct strokes, two horizontal and one oblique ([hand printed character]), which were subsequently represented by the form still in use (Z), a form producible by a single effort, without any removal of the pen from the paper.'

And so with regard to the pictorial origin of the letters. The early bêth differs from the later solely in having a pointed head instead of a rounded one. But the object which bêth was intended to represent was a tent, the earliest 'house' of pastoral man; and this had in primitive times the simple triangular form, Δ. Thus the early bêth more resembled the object than the later one. The early daleth is a simple triangle; the later has the right side of the triangle elongated, and the other two generally rounded into one. But daleth, 'door,' represented the opening of a tent, the form of which was like that of the tent, triangular. For other instances we must refer our readers to Professor Rawlinson's paper and the plate which accompanies it, merely remarking in the way of adverse criticism that the square letters of the Old Testament present a difficulty, since, while they are confessedly of later origin, such letters as bêth, gimel, zain, ain, kaph, shin, are less simple in the sense explained, than the older. The Moabite stone also throws light on the question of the time at which writing was introduced into Greece, the Greek alphabet of the earliest inscriptions (circ. B.C. 650-500) resembling that of the Moabite stone more closely than it does any later alphabet; so that Mr. Grote's opinion that letters were unknown to the Greeks of Homer's time, and Hesiod's, is in danger of being proved incorrect.

It is remarkable that a stone measuring three feet six inches in length and with thirty-four lines of writing on it should have escaped notice until the year 1868; but since Irby and Mangles visited Moab in 1809, scarcely any European traveller has passed near the spot where this monument was found; so that it has been said that the chief value of this discovery is in the prospect it affords of future successful exploration. It should be remembered that the Arabs are now aware of the price Europeans are willing to pay for such relics, and would no doubt bring others forward if they knew of any existing. Mr. E. H. Palmer, who was in the country in the spring of 1870, is probably right in his conclusion that above ground at least there does not exist another Moabite stone. But there are more fishes in the sea than have ever yet been caught; and if a few intelligent men accustomed to dealing with lawless Arabs could be sent out to Moab to conduct excavations, they might, if liberally supplied with money and other resources, obtain antiquities of great value, inscriptions possibly included. Dean Stanley points us also to 1 Sam. xv. 12, describing Saul's victory over the Amalekites, where it is said, 'Saul came to Carmel, and behold he set him up a place' (מַצִיג which is from the root נָצַג, to set, to put; in the Hiphil to make to stand, and which might be translated pillar or trophy)--the Dean points to this to show the possibility of even Jewish inscriptions coming to light.

To return to the characters at the south-east angle of the Haram--on the wall and on the handles of the jars or vases. The letters on the pottery are like those of the Moabite stone; whence the age of the jars is inferred to be about the same, and their origin Phoenician: the position of the pottery shows it to be of nearly the same age as the wall, and hence the antiquity of the wall is deduced; the wall itself shows Phoenician marks, and so the builders are believed to have been Phoenicians. This seems to us a little too hasty. The Moabite stone gives us the Moabite alphabet of King Mesha's time, which proves to be identical with that of old Phoenicia. Judea was geographically as near to Phoenicia as Moab was, and probably used the same alphabet, a supposition confirmed by the discovery of vase handles at Jerusalem with letters like those of the Moabite stone. It seems gratuitous to conclude that these vases were among the contents of a museum or were ever the property of Phoenicians, when the evidence goes to show that the language inscribed on them was common to all the races of Western Asia. Only for want of a better name has it been called 'Phoenician;' and Mr. Deutsch had already suggested the term 'Cadmean,' while Sir Henry Rawlinson had ventured the prediction that, should any early monument be found at Jerusalem, its inscription would be in this character. The Phoenician character was probably the only cursive character used by the Semitic nations, and the Hebrew character, Sir Henry believes, did not exist till after the return from the captivity. The vase handles therefore show us the kind of letters used by the Hebrew prophets, and the Cadmean masons' marks neither prove nor disprove the Phoenician origin of the Haram wall; but the identity of the vase-handle letters with those of the Moabite stone rather than with the alphabet of Assyrian tablets and gems, or of the inscription on the tomb of Eshmunazer (circ. B.C. 600) indicates the great antiquity both of the pottery and the south-east Haram wall. On this point we may add that we have compared (from the photographs) the letters of the vase-handles with those of the Moabite stone, and find the identity very apparent in the case of the tau, shin, kaph and mem.

The work promised by the Fund in the departments of natural history and geology still waits for want of means; though notes have been made on the occurrence of basalt, trap, hot springs, &c., and among the things sent home have been an occasional animal, a small collection of Coleoptera, a book of dried flowers from Moab, and some specimens of rock. In its zoology and botany, as well as in its human history and arts, Palestine has felt the influence of Africa, Asia and Europe; the heights of Lebanon and Hermon, the depths of Gennesareth and the Dead Sea, assist to make its natural history cosmopolitan. It is curious that the Clarias, a strange-looking fish of the Siluroid family, found by Tristram in the Lake of Galilee, and in one of the fountains near its shores, should be identical in species with a fish found in the Nile; thus far confirming Josephus, who says that the fountain of Capharnaum in Gennesareth produced a Nile fish, and on that account was thought to be a vein of the river of Egypt.[41] But the words of Linnæus are almost true to-day: 'We know more of the botany and zoology of farther India than we do of those of Palestine.' Of the geology we are in equal ignorance, although the depression of the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea invites attention as being the most remarkable on the face of the globe, and constituting, in the opinion of Sir R. Murchison, the key to the entire geology of the district. Mr. Prestwich, Mr. Tristram, and a few other gentlemen, if sent out and supported for some years, would probably astonish us by the results of their investigations. In meteorology the Society has made a commencement, by sending out instruments and publishing tabular statements of barometrical readings, temperature, rainfall, &c., observed at Beyrout, Nazareth, Gaza, Jaffa, and in the Lebanon. With all this work on hand, they have also begun the exploration of the Tih--the Wilderness of the Wanderings--sending out Mr. E. H. Palmer, a most accomplished Arabic scholar, formerly of the Sinai Ordnance Survey, who appears to have made some discoveries, but whose full statement is not yet before us.

We had intended to detail the difficulties under which the explorers have done their work, but the list is too long: counting every shade, from the laziness of the native workmen, to the whizzing of native bullets; from the thermometer at 110 degrees to attacks of fever and dysentery; from slips in scaling mountains, danger from falling stones, risk of choking in narrow aqueducts and sewers--we had noted not less than fifty instances.

We are bound to say that the Society has made a good beginning; that it has done fully as much as could be expected under all the circumstances, and with its inadequate funds; and that if it be not well supported for another five years it will be to the lasting disgrace of England. In its scientific and its religions aims, in its practical and its unsectarian character, it suits the present age; supplying facts for theorists, illustrating points of Scripture history, and confirming the general truth of the Bible.

Besides the completion of the work at Jerusalem, much remains to be done, not only in natural history and geology, but in the observation of manners and customs, exploration at other cities, such as Jezreel, Samaria, Hebron, Bethshan, Nazareth, and excavation of the mounds scattered over the face of the country. There will probably never be a better opportunity than the present: for the visit of the Prince of Wales to the Holy Land removed some prejudices, the Turkish Government is favourable to the enterprise, and the work is actually begun. We conclude this review of the work of the Palestine Exploration Fund by heartily endorsing the appeal of Mr. Deutsch at the annual meeting in 1869. 'We, as humble votaries of science, would, in the name of science, urge you to continue that in which both religion and science may join. And let me remind you of one thing. There are ruins enough in the City of Sorrows. Do not add fresh ruins. Do not leave there broken shafts, abandoned galleries; and let it not be told in Gath that this England, the richest, proudest, and most Bible-loving country in the world, undertook one of the greatest undertakings, and abandoned it--for want of money.'

ART. V.--The Early Sieges of Paris. Les Comtes de Paris; Histoire de l'Avènement de la Troisième Race. Par ERNEST MOURIN. Paris: Didier et Cie.

Robert der Tapfere, Markgraf von Anjou, der Stammvater des Kapetingischen Hauses. Von Dr. Phil. KARL VON KALCKSTEIN. Berlin: Löwenstein.

The events of the last few months have, in a special way, drawn the thoughts of men towards two cities which stand out among European capitals as witnesses of the way in which the history of remote times still has its direct bearing on things which are passing before our own eyes. Rome and Paris now stand out, as they have stood out in so many earlier ages, as the historic centres of a period which, there can be no doubt, will live to all time as one of the marked periods of the world's history. And it is not the least wonderful phænomenon of this autumn of wonders that, while our eyes have been drawn at once to Rome and to Paris, they have been drawn far more steadily and with far keener interest towards Paris than they have been drawn towards Rome. We can hardly doubt, whether we look back to the past or onwards to the future, that the fall of the Pope's temporal power is really a greater event than any possible result of the war between Germany and France. Yet such is the greater immediate interest of the present struggle, such perhaps is the instinctive attraction of mankind towards the more noisy and brilliant triumphs of the siege and the battle-field, that the really greater event, simply because of the ease with which it has happened, has passed almost unnoticed in the presence of the lesser. The world has seen the Papacy in several shapes; but the shape of a Pontiff, spiritually infallible, but politically a subject, and the subject not of an universal Emperor but of a mere local King, is something which the world has not seen before. What may come of it, no man can say; but we may be pretty sure that greater things will come of it in one way or another, than can come out of any settlement, in whatever direction, of conflicting French and German interests. Still, at this moment, the present fate of Paris unavoidably draws to itself more of our thoughts than the future fate of Rome. But it is well to keep the two cities together before our eyes, and all the more so because the past history and the present position of those two cities have points in common which no other city in Europe shares with them in their fulness, which only one other city in Europe can claim to share with them in any degree.

The history of Rome, as all the world knows, is the history of a city which grew into an Empire. It grew in truth into a twofold, perhaps a more than twofold Empire. Out of the village on the Palatine sprang the Rome of the Cæsars and the Rome of the Pontiffs. From Rome came the language, the theology, the code of law, which have had such an undying effect on the whole European world. Amidst all changes, the city itself has been always clothed with a kind of mysterious and superstitious charm, and its possession has carried with it an influence which common military and political considerations cannot always explain. And from the Old Rome on the Tiber many of these attributes passed--some were even heightened in passing--to the new Rome on the Bosporos. From the days of Constantine till now, no man has ever doubted that, in the very nature of things, Constantinople, in whatever hands, must be the seat of empire. To Western eyes this seems mainly the result of her unrivalled geographical situation; over large regions of the East the New Rome wields the same magic influence which in the West has been wielded by the Old. The City,[42] the City of the Cæsars, is in Christian eyes the one great object to be won; in Mahometan eyes it is the one great object to be kept. By the Bosporos, as by the Tiber, it is the city which has grown into the Empire, which has founded it, and which has sustained it.

Now of the other capitals of Europe--the capitals of the more modern states--one alone can claim to have been, in this way, the creator of the state of which it is now the head. Berlin, Madrid, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Saint Petersburg, are simply places chosen in later times, for reasons of caprice or convenience, as administrative centres of states which already existed. Vienna has grown from the capital of a Duchy into the capital of something which calls itself an Empire; but Vienna, as a city, has had nothing to do with the growth of that so-called Empire. London may fairly claim a higher place than any of the cities of which we have spoken. It was only by degrees, and after some fluctuations, that London, rather than Winchester, came to be permanently acknowledged as the capital of England. London won its rank, partly by virtue of an unrivalled military and commercial position, partly as the reward of the unflinching patriotism of its citizens in the Danish wars. But London in no way formed England, or guided her destinies. The history of London is simply that the city was found to be the most fitting and worthy head of an already existing kingdom. But Paris has been what London has been, and something more. Paris, like London, earned her pre-eminence in Gaul by a gallant and successful resistance to the Scandinavian enemy. It was the great siege of Paris in the ninth century which made Paris the chief among the cities of Gaul, and its Count the chief among the princes of Gaul. Its position first marked it out for the rank of a local capital, and, through the way in which it used its position, it grew into the capital of a kingdom. But it did not, like London, simply grow into the capital of a kingdom already existing. The city created first the county, and then the kingdom, of which it was successively the head. Modern France, as distinguished both from Roman Gaul and from the Western Kingdom of the Karlings, grew out of this County of Paris; and of the County of Paris the city was not merely the centre, but the life and soul. The position of Paris in the earliest times is best marked, as in the case of all Gaulish cities, by its place in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. It was a city, not of the first, but of the second rank; the seat of a Bishop, but not the seat of a Metropolitan.[43] Lutetia Parisiorum held the usual rank of one of those head towns of Gaulish tribes which grew into Roman cities. But it never became the centre of one of the great ecclesiastical and civil divisions; it never reached the rank of Lyons, Narbonne, Vienne, or Trier. Twice before the ninth century, the discerning eye, first of a Roman and then of a Frankish master, seemed to mark out the city of the Seine for greater things. It was the beloved home of Julian; it was the city which Hlodwig at once fixed upon for the seat of his new dominion. But the greatness of Paris, as the earliest settled seat of the Frankish power, was not doomed to be lasting. Under the descendants of Hlodwig Paris remained a seat of royalty; but, among the fluctuations of the Merovingian kingdoms, it was only one seat of royalty among several. It was the peer of Soissons, Orleans, and Metz--all of them places which thus, in the new state of things, assumed a higher importance than had belonged to them in Roman times. But, as the Austrasian House of the Karlings grew, first as Mayors, and then as Kings, to the lordship of the whole Frankish realm, the importance of the cities of Western Gaul necessarily lessened. Paris reached its utmost point of insignificance in the days of Charles the Great, whom French legends have pictured as a French King, reigning in Paris as his royal city. Whatever importance it had, it seems to have derived from its neighbourhood to the revered sanctuary of St. Denis. By a strange accident, the first King of the new house--the house with which Paris was to wage a war of races and languages--died either in the city itself, or in the precinct of the great monastery beyond its walls. Pippin, returning from a successful campaign in Aquitaine, fell sick at Saintes; from thence he was carried to Tours to implore the help of Saint Martin, and thence to Paris to implore the help of Saint Denis. He died at Paris, and was buried in the great minster which became the burial-place of the next and rival line of kings.[44] But Paris was neither the crowning-place nor the dwelling-place of his son, nor was it the object of any special attention during his long reign. Of the two sons of Pippin, between whom his kingdom was immediately divided, Paris fell to the lot of Karlmann. But he chose Soissons for his crowning-place--the place where his father had been crowned before him.[45] Charles, crowned at Noyon, made Aachen his capital, and, in the course of his whole reign, he visited Paris only on a single progress, when it is incidentally mentioned among a long string of other cities.[46]

But this time of utter neglect was, in the history of Paris, only the darkness before the coming of the dawn. In the course of the next reign Paris begins to play an important part, and from that time the importance of the city steadily grew till it became what we have seen it in our own day. The occasional visits of Lewis the Pious to the city are dwelled on by his poetical biographer with evident delight, and with even more than usual pomp of words.[47]. And the city was now about to appear in its most characteristic; light. In the words of Sir Francis Palgrave, who has sketched the early history of Paris with great power and insight,[48] 'the City of Revolutions begins her real history by the first French Revolution.'[49] In this particular case we do not even grudge the premature use of the word 'French,' for the movement of which he speaks was plainly a movement of the Romanized lands of the West against their Teutonic master. Most likely no such feeling was consciously present to the mind of any man; but nations and parties seek to shape themselves unconsciously, and cities and regions learn to play their appropriate parts, before they can give any intelligible account of what they are doing. The Emperor was leading an expedition against the revolted Bretons; suddenly all the disaffected spirits of the Empire, his own sons among the foremost, gathered themselves together at Paris.[50] They then seized Lewis himself at Compiègne, and their hated step-mother Judith on the rock of Laon. But one part of his dominions was still faithful to the imprisoned Cæsar; the German lands had no share in the rebellion, and eagerly sought for the restoration of their sovereign. In marking out the geographical divisions of feeling, the writer of the ninth century, like those of the nineteenth, is driven, as it were, to forestal the language of a somewhat later time. The Emperor had no confidence in the French, but he put his trust in the German.[51]

Such was the part--a characteristic part--played by Paris in the Revolution of 830. Four years later Paris appears playing an opposite, yet a no less characteristic part. The Emperor Lewis, already restored and again deposed, is held as a prisoner by his eldest son Lothar, and is led in bonds to Paris.[52] Again the men of the East, the faithful Germans, are in arms for their sovereign under Lewis, at that moment his only loyal son. But by this time the city has changed sides. Lothar, for fear of the German host, flees to the South, leaving his father at liberty; the late captive is led by his rejoicing people to the minster of Saint Denis, and there is girt once more with the arms of the warrior and with the Imperial robes of the Cæsar.[53] Once then in the course of its long history, did Paris behold the inauguration of a lawful Emperor. But it was the re-inauguration of an Emperor whom one Parisian revolution had overthrown, and whom another Parisian revolution had set up again; and in the moment alike of his fall and of his restoration the force of loyal Germany forms at one time a threatening, at another an approving, background.

We thus see Paris, well-nigh unheard of during the reign of Charles the Great, suddenly rise into importance under his son. Under Charles the Bald its importance becomes greater still, and it begins to assume the peculiar function which raised it to the head place in Gaul. The special wretchedness of the time was fast showing the great military importance of the site. Under the rule of the Austrasian Mayors and Kings there had been endless wars, but they had been wars waged far away from Paris. Above all, no hostile fleet had for ages sailed up the Seine. Lutetia on her island must, under the Frankish power, have enjoyed for some generations a repose almost as unbroken as she had enjoyed in the days of the Roman Peace. Now all was changed. The Empire was torn in pieces by endless civil wars, wars of brother against brother, and the fleets of the Northmen, barely heard of in the days of Charles the Great, were making their way up the months of all its rivers. Men now began to learn that the island city, encompassed by the broad Seine, with its bridges and its minsters, and the Roman palace on the left bank, was at once among the most precious possessions and among the surest bulwarks of the realm. It is not without significance that the one time when the Great Charles himself visited Paris, it was in the course of a progress in which he had been surveying the shores of the Northern Ocean.[54] He came to Paris as a mourner and as a pilgrim, yet we may believe that neither his grief nor his devotion hindered him from marking the importance of the post. His eye surely marked the site as one fated to be the main defence, if not of his whole Empire, at least of its western portion, against the pirate-barks by which the Ocean was beginning to be covered. And probably it was not mere accident that it was in the course of an expedition against Brittany that Paris became the centre of the conspiracy of 830. In a Breton war, a land war, Paris would not be of the same pre-eminent importance as it was in the invasion of the Northmen. Still the island stronghold would be of no small moment in case of a Breton inroad, and in the days of Lewis the Pious a Breton inroad was again a thing to be dreaded. Among the troubles of the next reign the pre-eminent importance of Paris begins to stand out more and more strongly. By the last partition under Lewis the Pious, his youngest son, Charles the Bald, became King of a kingdom formed by the accidental union of Neustria and Aquitaine. The kingdom so formed answered to nothing which had been thought of in earlier divisions, but it answered in a kind of rough way to modern France. Far smaller as a whole, it took in districts at both ends, in Flanders and in Catalonia, which have long ceased to be looked upon as French. But it nowhere came near to the coveted frontier of the Rhine and the Alps. Of this kingdom it seemed at first that Paris was at once to become the capital; no other city filled so prominent a place in the early history of the reign of Charles the Bald. In the very beginning of his reign we find Charles making use of the position of the city and its bridge: to bar the progress of his brother, the Emperor Lothar. We find him dwelling for a long time in the city, and giving the citizens the delight of a spectacle by appearing among them in royal pomp at the Easter festival.[55] Four years later, the city began to appear in its other character as the great mark for Scandinavian attack. The northern pirates were now swarming on every sea, and the coasts of Britain, Gaul, and Germany were all alike desolated by their harryings. But they instinctively felt that, while no shore lay more temptingly for their objects than the shores of Northern Gaul, there was no point either of the insular or of the continental realm where their approach was better guarded against. The island city, with its two bridges and its strongly fortified Roman suburb on the mainland, blocked their path as perhaps no other stronghold in Gaul or Britain could block it.[56] In the very year of the fight of Fontenay, as if they had scented the mutual slaughter from afar, the Northmen had sailed up the stream and had harried Rouen and the surrounding lands with the sternest horrors of fire and sword.[57] Four years later they pressed on yet further into the heart of the defenceless realm; Paris was attacked; in strange contrast with the valour of its citizens forty years later, no one had the heart to resist; the city was stormed and sacked; and King Charles, finding his forces unequal to defend or to avenge, was driven to forestal the wretched policy of Æthelred, and to buy a momentary respite from the invaders.[58] Other attacks, other harryings followed. One more terrible than all, in the year 857, was specially remembered on account of the frightful havoc wrought among the churches of the city. The church of Saint Genoveva, on the left bank of the river--better known to modern ears as the Pantheon--was burned, Saint Stephen's, afterwards known as Nôtre Dame, Saint Germans, and Saint Denis, bought their deliverance only by large ransoms.[59] In the minds of the preachers of the time the woes of Paris suggested the woes of Jerusalem and a wail of sorrow went up from the Jeremiah of the age for the havoc of the city and its holy places.[60]

When we remember the importance to which Paris was plainly beginning to rise under Lewis the Pious, we may perhaps be led to think that it was the constant attacks to which the city was exposed which hindered it from becoming the permanent dwelling-place of royalty under Charles the Bald. That the city held a place in his affections throughout his life is shown by his choosing Saint Denis as the place of his burial. But it never became the royal city of the Kings of his house. We need hardly look on it as a mark of personal cowardice in Charles that he preferred to fix the ordinary seat of his government in some other place than the most exposed fortress of his kingdom. Compiègne now often appears as a royal dwelling-place; but the home and centre of Carolingian royalty in the Western Kingdom gradually fixed itself on a spot the most opposite to Paris in position and feeling which the Western Kingdom could afford. Paris and Laon were in every sense rivals; their rivalry is stamped upon their very outward appearance. Each is a representative city. Paris, like Châlons and Bristol, is essentially an island city; the river was its defence against ordinary enemies, however easily that defence might be changed into a highway for its attack in the hands of the amphibious Northmen. But Laon is the very pride of that class of towns which out of Gaulish hill-forts grew into Roman and mediæval cities. None stands more proudly on its height; none has kept its ancient character so little changed to our own day. The town still keeps itself within the walls which fence in the hill-top, and whatever there is of suburb has grown up at the foot, apart from the ancient city. Paris again was the home of the new-born nationality of the Romance speech,[61] the home of the new French nation. Laon stood near the actual German border, in a land where German was still spoken; it was fitted in every way to be, as it proved, the last home of a German dynasty in the West. There can be little doubt that, by thus moving eastward, by placing themselves in this outlying Teutonic corner of their realm, the Carolingian Kings of the West threw away the opportunity of putting themselves at the head of the new national movement, and of reigning as national Kings, if not of the whole Romance-speaking population of Gaul, at least of its strictly French portion north of the Loire.

Of such a mission we may be sure Charles the Bald and his successors never dreamed. The chances are that those to whom that mission really fell dreamed of it just as little. We must never forget that the national movements of those days were for the most part instinctive and unconscious; but they were all the more powerful and lasting for being instinctive and unconscious. An act of Charles the Bald, one of the ordinary grants by a King to one of his vassals, created the French nation. The post from which the King himself shrank was entrusted to a valiant subject, and Robert the Strong, the mightiest champion of the land against the heathen invader, received the government of the whole border land threatened by the Breton and the Northman.[62] We may be sure that the thoughts of the King himself did not reach at the most beyond satisfaction at having provided the most important post in his realm with a worthy defender. To shield himself from the enemy by such a barrier as was furnished by Robert's country, it was worth while to sacrifice the direct possession even of the fair lands between the Loire and the Seine. His dominion was a mark;[63] his truest title a marquis. But the Mark of France, like the Mark of Brandenburg and the Mark of Austria, was destined to great things. Robert no doubt, like the other governors and military chiefs, who were fast growing from magistrates into Princes, rejoiced in the prospect of becoming the source of a dynasty, a dynasty which could not fail to take a high place among the princes of Gaul. But he hardly dreamed of founding a line of Kings, and a line of Kings the most lasting that the world ever saw. Still less did he dream of founding a nation. But he did both. The Counts who held the first place of danger and honour soon eclipsed in men's eyes the Kings who had retired to the safer obscurity of their eastern frontier. The city of the river became a national centre in a way in which the city of the rock could never be. The people of the struggling Romance speech of northern Gaul found a centre and a head in the rising city and its gallant princes. That Robert was himself of German descent, the son of a stranger from some of the Teutonic provinces of the Empire,[64] mattered not a whit. From the beginning of their historic life the Parisian Dukes and Kings have been the leaders and representatives of the new French nationality. No royal dynasty has ever been so thoroughly identified with the nation over which it ruled, because no royal dynasty could be so truly said to have created the nation. Paris, France, and the Dukes and Kings of the French are three ideas which can never be kept asunder. A true instinct soon gave the ruler of the new state a higher and a more significant title. The Count of Paris was merged in the Duke of the French, and the Duke of the French was soon to be merged in the King. The name of Francia, a name whose shiftings and whose changes of meaning have perplexed both history and politics--a name which Eastern and Western writers seem to have made it a kind of point of honour to use in different meanings[65]--now gradually settles down, as far as the Western Kingdom is concerned, into the name of a territory, answering roughly to the Celtic Gaul of the elder geography.[66] It has still to be distinguished by epithets like Occidentalis and Latina, from the Eastern Francia of Teutonic speech, but, in the language of Gaul, Francia and Franci for the future mean the dominion and the subjects of the lord of Paris. We need not say that the lands beyond the Rhone, the Saône, and the Maes, which formed no part of the Western Kingdom, are not included under the name of Francia. But neither are the lands held, like the French Duchy, in fief of the common sovereign, Brittany, Flanders, Aquitaine, and the ducal Burgundy. To these must be added Normandy, the land wrested from the French Duchy to form the inheritance of the converted Northman. France is still but one among the principalities of Gaul; but, like Wessex in England, like Castile in Spain, like Prussia in Germany and Piedmont in Italy, it was the one destined, by one means or another, to swallow up the rest. From the grant of 861, from the foundation of the Parisian Duchy, we may date the birth of the French state and nation. From that day onwards France is whatever can, by fair means or foul, be brought into obedience to Paris and her ruler.

Count Robert the Strong, the Maccabæus of the West-Frankish realm, the patriarch of the old Capets, of the Valois, and of the Bourbons, died as he had lived, fighting for Gaul and Christendom against the heathen Dane.[67] But his dominion and his mission passed to a son worthy of him--to Odo, or Eudes,[68] the second Count of his house, presently to be the first of the Kings of Paris. In his day came the great struggle, the mighty and fiery trial, which was to make the name of Paris and her lord famous throughout the world. On the great siege of Paris by the Northmen, the turning-point in the history of the city, of the Duchy, and in truth of all Western Europe, we may fairly dwell at somewhat greater detail than we have done on the smaller events which paved the way for it. We must bear in mind the wretched state of all the countries which made up the Carolingian Empire. The Northmen were sailing up every river, and were spreading their ravages to every accessible point. Every year in the various contemporary annals is marked by the harrying of some fresh district, by the sack of some city, by the desecration of some revered monastery.[69] Resistance, when there was any, was almost wholly local; the invaders were so far from encountering the whole force of the Empire that they never encountered the whole force of any one of its component kingdoms. The day of Saul-court, renowned in that effort of old Teutonic minstrelsy which may rank alongside of our own songs of Brunanburh and Maldon,[70] the day when the young king Lewis led the West-Frankish host to victory over the heathen,[71] stands out well-nigh alone in the records of that unhappy time. While neither realm was spared, while one set of invaders ravaged the banks of the Seine and the Loire, while another more daring band sacked Aachen, Köln, and Trier,[72] the rival Kings of the Franks were mainly intent on extending their borders at the expense of one another. Charles the Bald was far more eager to extend his nominal frontier to the Rhine,[73] or to come back from Italy adorned with the Imperial titles,[74] than he was to take any active step to drive out the common enemy of all the kindred realms. At last the whole Empire, save the Burgundian Kingdom of Boso, was once more joined together under Charles the Fat. Paris was again under the nominal sovereignty of an Emperor whose authority, equally nominal everywhere, extended also over Rome and Aachen. Precarious and tottering as such an Empire was, the even nominal union of so many crowns on a single head, however unfit that head was to bear their weight, does seem to have given for the moment something like a feeling of greater unity and thereby of greater strength. Paris, defended by its own Count and its own Bishop, was defended by them in the name of His Emperor, Lord of the World.[75] The sovereigns alike of East and West were appealed to for help, and at least a show of help was sent in the name of both parts of the Frankish realm.[76] The defence of Paris was essentially a local defence, waged by its own citizens under the command of their local chiefs. Still the great check which the invaders then received came nearer to a national act on the part of the whole Frankish Empire than anything which had happened since the death of Charles the Great.

Our materials for the great siege are fairly abundant. Several of the contemporary chronicles, in describing this gallant struggle, throw off somewhat of their usual meagreness, and give an account conceived with an unusual degree of spirit and carried out with an unusual amount of detail.[77] And we have a yet more minute account, which, even as it is, is of considerable value, and which, had it been a few degrees less wearisome and unintelligible, would have been of the highest interest. Abbo, a distinguished churchman of those times, a monk of the house of Saint German, and not only a contemporary, but a spectator and sharer in the defence,[78] conceived the happy idea of writing a minute narrative of the exciting scenes which he had witnessed. But he unhappily threw his tale into the shape of hexameters which have few rivals for affectation and obscurity. The political biographer of Lewis the Pious at all events writes Latin; Abbo writes in a Babylonish dialect of his own composing, stuffed full of Greek and other out-of-the-way words, and to parts of which he himself found it needful to attach a glossary. Still with all this needless darkness, he gives us many details, and he especially preserves many individual names which we should not find out from the annalists. A fervent votary of Saint German, a loyal citizen of Paris, a no less loyal subject of the valiant Count who, when he wrote, had grown into a King, Abbo had every advantage which personal knowledge and local interest could give to a narrator of the struggle. Only we cannot help wishing that he had stooped to tell his tale, if not in his native tongue, whether Romance or Teutonic, yet at least in the intelligible Latin of Nithard in a past generation and of Richer in a future one.[79]

The poet begins with a panegyric on his city, in which he may, while dealing with such a theme, be forgiven for somewhat unduly exalting its rank among the cities of the world.[80] Its position, the strength of the island-fortress, connected with the mainland by its castles on either side, is plainly set forth.[81] The defenders of the city are clearly set before us; Odo the Count, the future King, as we are often reminded,[82] and Gozlin the Bishop, stand forth in the front rank. Around the two great local chiefs are gathered a secondary band of their kinsfolk and supporters, clerical and lay. There is Odo's brother Robert, himself to wear a crown in the city which he defended, but in days to which the foresight of the poet did not extend. There is the valiant Count Ragnar; there is the warlike Abbot Ebles of Saint Germans, whose exploits are recorded with special delight by the loyal monk of his house.[83] A crowd of lesser names are also handed down to us, names of men who had their honourable share in the work, but with whose bare names it is hardly needful to burthen the memories of modern readers. A great object of attack on the part of the Northmen was the castle which guarded the bridge on the right bank of the river, represented in after times by the Grand Châtelet. The watchful care of the Bishop had been diligent in strengthening this and the other defences of the city; but the last works which were to guard this important point were not fully finished.[84] The Danish fleet now drew near, a fleet manned, so it was said, by more than thirty thousand warriors.[85] As in the tale of our own Brihtnoth,[86] the invaders began with a peaceful message. The leader of the pirates, Sigefrith, the sea-king,--a king, as the poet tells us, without a kingdom[87]--sought an interview with Count Odo, and demanded a peaceful passage through the city. Odo sternly answers that the city is entrusted to his care by his lord the Emperor, and that he will never forsake the duty which was laid upon him. The siege now began; the Northmen strove to storm the unfinished tower. After two days of incessant fighting, and an intervening night spent in repairing the defences, the valour of the defenders prevailed. The Count and the Bishop, and the Abbot who could pierce seven Danes with a single shot of his arrow,[88] finally drove back the heathen to their ships; and instead of the easy storm and sack which they doubtless looked for on this, as on earlier occasions, the Northmen were driven to undertake the siege of the city in form.[89]

One is a little surprised at the progress in the higher branches of the art of war which had clearly been made by the enemy who now assaulted Paris. The description of their means of attack, if not intelligible in every detail, at least shows that the freebooters, merciless heathens as they were, were at all events thorough masters of the engineering science of their age.[90] But, through the whole winter of 885, all their attempts were unavailing. The skill and valour of the defenders were equal to those of the besiegers, and their hearts were strung by every motive which could lead men to defend themselves to the last. But early in the next year, in February 886, accident threw a great advantage into the hands of the besiegers. A great flood in the Seine swept away, or greatly damaged, the lesser bridge, the painted bridge, that which joined the island to the fortress on the left bank of the river.[91] That fortress and the suburb which it defended, the suburb which contained the Roman palace and the ministers of Saint Genoveva and Saint German, were thus cut off from the general defences of the city. The watchful care of the Bishop strove to repair the bridge by night. But the attempt was forestalled by the invaders; the tower was isolated and surrounded by the enemy. The Bishop and the other defenders of the city were left to behold, to weep, and to pray from the walls, at the fate of their brethren whom they could no longer help.[92] The tower was fiercely attacked; the gate did not give way till fire was brought to help the blows of the Northmen; the defenders of the tower all perished either by the flames or by the sword, and their bodies were hurled into the river before the eyes of their comrades.[93] The conquerors now destroyed the tower, and from their new vantage ground they pressed the siege of the island city with increased vigour.

The chances of war seemed now to be turning against the besieged. The stout heart of Bishop Gozlin at last began to fail; he saw that Paris could no longer be defended by the arms of its citizens only. He sent a message to Henry, the Duke of the Eastern Franks, praying him to come to the defence of the Christian people. The Duke came; we are told that his presence did little or nothing for the besieged city;[94] yet in the obscure verses of the poet we seem to discern something like a night attack on the Danish camp on the part of the Saxon Duke and his followers.[95] But in any case the coming of the German allies did nothing for the permanent relief of the city. They went back to their own land; Paris was again left to its own resources, and at last the Bishop, worn out with sorrow and illness, began to seek the usual delusive remedy. He began to enter into negotiations with Sigefrith, which were cut short by the prelate's death. The news was known in the Danish camp before it was commonly known within the walls of Paris, and the mass of the citizens first learnt from the insulting shouts of the besiegers that their valiant Bishop was no more.[96]

The Bishop, as long as he lived, had been the centre and soul of the whole defence, yet it would seem that, at the actual moment of his death, his removal was a gain. We hear no more, at least on the part of the men of Paris, of any attempts at treating with the enemy. One bitter wail of despair from the besieged city reaches our ears, and the hero of the second act of the siege now stands forth. The spiritual chief was gone; the temporal chief steps into his place, and more than into his place. Count Odo appears as cheering the hearts of the people by his eloquence, and as leading them on to repeated combats with the besiegers.[97] At last hunger began to tell on the strength of the defenders; help from without was plainly needed, and this time it was to be sought, not from any inferior chief, but from the common sovereign, the Emperor and King of so many realms. Count Odo himself went forth on the perilous errand; he called on the princes of the Empire for help in the time of need, and warned the sluggish Augustus himself that, unless help came speedily, the city would be lost for ever.[98] Long before any troops were set in motion in any quarter for the deliverance of Paris, the valiant Count was again within its walls, bringing again a gleam of joy to the sad hearts of the citizens, both by the mere fact of his presence and by the gallant exploit by which he was enabled to appear among them. The Northmen knew of his approach, and made ready to bar his way to the city. Before the gate of the tower on the right bank, the tower which still guarded the northern bridge, the lines of the heathen stood ready to receive the returning champion. Odo's horse was killed under him, but, sword in hand, he hewed himself a path through the thick ranks of the enemy; he made good his way to the gate, and was once more within the walls of his own city, ready to share every danger of his faithful people.[99]

Such a city, we may well say, deserved to become the seat of Kings, and such a leader deserved to wear a royal crown within its walls. Eight months of constant fighting passed away after the return of Odo before the lord alike of Rome, of Aachen, and of Paris appeared before the city where just now his presence was most needed. Towards the last days of summer Duke Henry again appeared, but it was fully autumn before the Emperor himself found his way to the banks of the Seine.[100] Duke Henry came, with an army drawn from both the Frankish realms, Eastern and Western.[101] With more show of prudence than he had shown at his former coming, Henry began by reconnoitring both the city and the camp of the enemy, to judge at what point an attack might be made with least risk.[102] But the Northmen were too wary for him. They had surrounded their whole camp with a network of trenches, three feet deep and one foot wide, filled up with straw and brushwood, and made to present the appearance of a level surface.[103] A small party only were left in ambush. As the Duke drew near, they sprang up, hurled their javelins, and provoked him with shouts. Henry pressed on in wrath, but he was soon caught in the simple trap which had been laid for him; his horse fell, and he himself was hurled to the ground. The enemy rushed upon him, slew him, and stripped him in the sight of his army.[104] One of the defenders of the city, the brave Count Ragnar, of whom we have already heard, came in time only to bear off the body, at the expense of severe wounds received in his own person.[105] The corpse of the Duke was carried to Soissons and was buried in the Church of Saint Médard. The army of Henry, disheartened by the loss of their chief, presently returned to their own homes. Paris was again left to its own resources, cheered only by such small rays of hope as might spring from the drowning of one of the besieging leaders in the river.[106]

The news of the death of Henry was brought to the Emperor. Notwithstanding his grief--perhaps an euphemism for his fear--he pressed on towards Paris with his army; but even the chronicler most favourable to him is obliged to confess that the lord of so many nations, at the head of the host gathered from all his realms, did nothing worthy of the Imperial majesty.[107] All in truth that the Emperor Charles did was to patch up a treaty with the barbarians, by virtue of which, on condition of their raising the siege of Paris, they received a large sum as the ransom of the city, and were allowed to ravage Burgundy without let or hindrance.[108] We are told indeed that this step was taken because the land to be ravaged--are we to understand the Kingdom of Boso?--was in rebellion.[109] At all events, the Christian Emperor, the last who reigned over the whole Empire, handed over a Christian land as a prey to pagan teeth, and left Paris without striking a blow. Charles went straight back into Germany, and there spent the small remnant of his reign and life in a disgraceful domestic quarrel.[110] One act however he did which concerns our story. Hugh the Abbot, the successor of Robert the Strong in the greater part of his Duchy, had died during the siege. The valiant Count of Paris was now, by Imperial grant, put in possession of all the domains which had been held by his father.[111]

But the Count was not long to remain a mere Count; the city and its chief were alike to receive the reward of their services in the cause of Christendom. Presently came that strange and unexampled event by which the last Emperor of the legitimate male stock of the Great Charles was deposed by the common consent of all his dominions. The Empire again split up into separate Kingdoms, ruled over by Kings of their own choice. The choice of the Western realm fell, as it well deserved to fall, upon the illustrious Count of Paris. The reign of Odo indeed was not undisturbed, nor was his title undisputed. He had to struggle in the beginning of his reign with a rival in the Italian Guy, and in latter years he had to withstand the more formidable opposition of a rival King of the old Imperial line. And chosen as he was by the voice of what we may now almost venture to call the French people, hallowed as King in the old royal seat of Compiègne by the hands of the Primate of Sens, the Metropolitan of his own Paris,[112] Odo had still to acknowledge the greater power and higher dignity of the Eastern King. He had to confess himself the man of Arnulf, to receive his crown again at Arnulf's hands, while Arnulf was not as yet a Roman Emperor, but still only a simple King of the East Franks.[113] Still the Count had become a King; the city which his stout heart and arm had so well defended had become a royal city. The rank indeed both of the city and its King, was far from being firmly fixed. A hundred years of shiftings and changings of dynasties, of rivalry between Laon and Paris, between the Frank and the Frenchman, had still to follow. But the great step had been taken; there was at last a King of the French reigning in Paris. The city which by its own great deeds had become the cradle of a nation, the centre of a kingdom, was now placed in the foremost rank at their head. The longest and most unbroken of the royal dynasties of Europe had now begun to reign. And it had begun to reign, because the first man of that house who wore a crown was called to that crown as the worthiest man in the realm over which he ruled.

But we must go back to the enemy before Paris. By the treaty concluded with the Emperor, they were to raise the siege, but they were left at liberty to harry Burgundy and other lands. The citizens of Paris, however, steadfastly refused to allow them to pass up the Seine; so the Northmen ventured on a feat which in that age was looked on as unparalleled.[114] They saw, we are told, that the city could not be taken; so they carried their ships for two miles by land, and set sail at a point of the river above the city.[115] While the Empire was falling in pieces, while new kingdoms were arising and were being struggled for by rival kings, the Northmen were harrying at pleasure. Soissons was sacked;[116] after a long and vain attack on the mighty walls of Sens, the enemy found it convenient to retire on a payment of money.[117] Meaux also, under the valiant Count Theodberht, stood a siege; but after the death of their defender, the citizens capitulated. The capitulation was broken by the Northmen; the city was burned, and the inhabitants were massacred.[118] By this time Odo was King. Meanwhile the Northmen, after their retreat from Sens, had made another attempt on Paris, and had been again beaten off by the valiant citizens.[119] The King now came to what was now his royal city, and established a fortified camp in the neighbourhood to secure it from future attacks.[120] Yet when the Northmen once more besieged Paris in the autumn of 889, even Odo himself had to stoop to the common means of deliverance, The new King, the first Parisian King, bought off the threatened attack by the payment of a Danegeld, and the pirates went away by land and sea to ravage the Constantine peninsula, the land which, a generation or two later, was to become the special land of the converted Northmen.[121]

Paris was finally secured against Scandinavian attack by the establishment of the Duchy of Normandy. By the treaty of Clair-on-Epte in 913, Rolf Ganger, changed in French and Latin mouths into Rou and Rollo, became the man of the King of Laon for lands which were taken away from the dominion of the Duke of Paris. Charles the Simple, the restored Karling, was now King; Robert, the brother of Odo, was Duke of the French, and there can be no doubt that the tottering monarchy of Laon gained much by the dismemberment of the Parisian Duchy and by the establishment at the mouth of the Seine of a vassal bound by special ties to the King himself. The foundation of the Rouen Duchy at once secured Paris against all assaults of mere heathen pirates. France had now a neighbour to the immediate north of her--a neighbour who shut her off from the sea and from the mouth of her own great river--a neighbour with whom she might have her wars, as with other neighbours--but a neighbour who had embraced her creed, who was speedily adopting her language and manners, and who formed, part of the same general political system as herself. The shifting relations between France and Normandy during the tenth and eleventh centuries form no part of our subject, but it will be well to bear in mind that Paris was at once sheltered and imprisoned through the Norman possession of the lower course of the Seine.

It follows then that the next besiegers of Paris came from a different quarter; and these next besiegers came from the quarter from which its last besiegers have come. In the course of the tenth century, the century of so many shifting relations between Rouen, Laon, and Paris, while the rivalry between King and Duke sometimes broke forth and sometimes slumbered, Paris was twice attacked or threatened by German armies. Both the First and the Second Otto at least appeared in the near neighbourhood of the city. In 946, the first and greatest of the name, not yet Emperor in formal rank, but already exercising an Imperial pre-eminence over the kingdoms into which the Frankish Empire had split up, entered the French Duchy with two royal allies or vassals in his train. One was the Burgundian King Conrad, Lord of the realm between the Rhone and the Alps; the other was the nominal King of Paris and its Duke, Lewis, alike the heir of all the Karlings and the descendant of our own Ælfred, whose nominal reign over the Western Kingdom was practically well nigh confined to the single fortress of Compiègne. Among the shifting relations of the Princes of the Western Kingdom, Hugh the Duke of the French and Richard the Duke of the Normans were now allied against their Carolingian over-lord. He had lately been their prisoner, and had been restored to freedom and kingship only by the surrender of the cherished possession of his race, the hill and tower of Laon. Otto, the mighty Lord of the Eastern realm, felt himself called on to step in when Teutonic interests in the Western lands seemed to be at their last gasp. The three Kings united their forces against the two Dukes, and marched against the capitals both of France and Normandy. But never were the details of a campaign told in a more contradictory way. There can be little doubt that Rouen was besieged, and besieged unsuccessfully. Thus much at least the German historian allows;[122] in Norman lands the tale swells into a magnificent legend.[123] What happened at Paris is still less clear. Laon, for the moment a French possession, was besieged unsuccessfully, and Rheims successfully.[124] Then, after a vain attempt on Senlis, the combined armies of the Kings of Aachen, Arles, and Compiègne drew near to the banks of the Seine. Flodoard, the canon of Rheims, the discreetest writer of his age, leaves out all mention of Paris and its Duke; he tells us merely that the Kings crossed the river and harried the whole land except the cities.[125] The Saxon Widukind tells us how his King, at the head of thirty-two legions, every man of whom wore a straw hat[126] besieged Duke Hugh in Paris, and duly performed his devotions at the shrine of Saint Denis.[127] From these two entries we are safe in inferring that, if Paris was now in any strict sense besieged, it was at least not besieged successfully. But Richer, the monk of Saint Remigius, one of the liveliest tale-tellers of any age, is ready with one of those minute stories which, far more than the entries of more solemn annalists, help to bring us face to face with the men of distant times. The Kings were drawing near to the Seine. In order that the enemy might be cut off from all means of crossing, the Duke of the French, Hugh the Great, aware of their approach, had bidden all vessels, great and small, to be taken away from the right bank of the river for the space of twenty miles. But his design was hindered by a cunning stratagem of the invaders. Ten young men, who had made up their mind to brave every risk,[128] went in advance of the army of the Kings, having laid aside their military garb and provided themselves with the staves and wallets of pilgrims. Protected by this spiritual armour, they passed unhurt and unchallenged through the whole city of Paris, and crossed over both bridges to the left bank of the river. There, not far from the suburb of Saint German, dwelt a miller, who kept the mills which were turned by the waters of the Seine.[129] He willingly received the comely youths who professed to have crossed from the other side of the river to visit the holy places. They repaid his hospitality with money, and moreover purchased wine, in the consumption of which a jovial day was spent. The genial drink opened the heart and the lips of the host, and he freely answered the various questions of his guests. He was not only a miller; he was also the Duke's head fisherman, and he moreover turned an occasional penny by letting out vessels for hire. The Germans praised the kindness which he had already shown them, which made them presume to ask for further favours. They had still other holy places to pray at, but they were wearied with their journey. They promised him a reward of ten shillings--no small sum in the tenth century--if he would carry them across to the other side. He answered that, by the Duke's orders, all vessels were kept on the left bank to cut off all means of crossing from the Germans. They told him that it might be done in the night without discovery. Eager for his reward, he agreed. He received the money, and, accompanied by a boy, his step-son, he guided them to the spot where seventy-two ships lay moored to the river side. The boy was presently thrown into the river, the miller was seized by the throat, and compelled by threats of instant death to loose the ships. He obeyed, and was presently bound and put on board one of the vessels. Each of the Germans now entered a ship and steered it to the right bank. The whole body then returned in one of the vessels, and each again brought across another. By going through this process eight times, the whole seventy-two ships were brought safely to the right bank. By daybreak the army of the Kings had reached the river. They crossed in safety, for all the inhabitants of the country had fled, and the Duke himself had sought shelter at Orleans. The land was harried as far as the Loire, but of the details of the siege of Rouen and of the siege of Paris, if any siege there was, we hear not a word.[130]

The military results of the first German invasion of France and Normandy were certainly not specially glorious. Laon, Senlis, Paris, and Rouen, were, to say the least, not taken. All that was done was to take Rheims and to ravage a large extent of open country. But, in a political point of view, the expedition was neither unsuccessful nor unimportant. From that time the influence of the Eastern King in the affairs of the Western Kingdom becomes of paramount importance, and under his protection, the King of the West Franks, King of Compiègne and soon again to be King of Laon, holds a far higher place than before in the face of his mighty vassals at Paris and Rouen. The next German invasion, forty years later, found quite another state of things in the Western Kingdom. The relations between King Lothar and Duke Hugh Capet were wholly different from the relations which had existed between their fathers, King Lewis and Duke Hugh the Great. No less different were the relations between Lothar and Otto the Second from those which had existed between their fathers, Lewis and Otto the Great. The elder Otto had been a protector, first to his brother-in-law and then to his nephew; the younger Otto was only a rival in the eyes of his cousin.[131] On the other hand, it was the policy of Hugh Capet to keep up the dignity of the Crown which he meant one day to wear, and not to appear as an open enemy of the dynasty which he trusted quietly to supplant. For a while then the rivalry between Laon and Paris was hushed, and the friendship of Paris carried with it the friendship of Rouen and Angers. Thus, while Lewis, a prince than whom none ever showed a loftier or more gallant spirit, was hunted from one fortress or one prison to another, his son, a man in every way his inferior, was really able to command the forces of the whole land north of the Loire. Again the King of Gaul looked Rhine-wards; the border land of Lotharingia kindled the ambition of a prince who might deem himself King both of Laon and Paris. That border land, after many times fluctuating to and fro, had now become an acknowledged portion of the Eastern Kingdom. But a sudden raid might win it for the King of the West, and the Duke of Paris would be nothing loth to help to make such an addition to the Kingdom which he meant one day to possess. The raid was made; the hosts of the King and the Duke crossed the frontier, and burst suddenly on the Imperial dwelling-place of Aachen. The Emperor, with his pregnant wife, the Greek princess Theophanô, had to flee before the approach of his cousin, and Lothar had the glory of turning the brazen eagle which his great forefather had placed on the roof of his palace in such a direction as no longer to be a standing menace to the western realms.[132] As in a more recent warfare, the Gaul began with child's play, and the German made answer in terrible earnest. The dishonour done to their prince and his realm stirred the heart of all Germany, and thirty thousand horsemen--implying no doubt a far larger number of warriors of lower degree--gathered round their Emperor to defend and avenge the violated Teutonic soil. Lothar made no attempt to defend his immediate dominions; he fled to crave the help of his mighty vassal at Paris.[133] The German hosts marched, seemingly without meeting any resistance, from their own frontier to the banks of the Seine. Everywhere the land was harried; cities were taken or surrendered, but the pious Emperor, the Advocate of the Universal Church, everywhere showed all due honour to the saints and their holy places.[134] In primatial Rheims, in our own days to be the temporary home of another German King, the German Cæsar paid his devotions at the shrine of Saint Remigius, the saint who had received an earlier German conqueror still into the fold of Christ.[135] At Soissons Saint Médard received equal worship, and when the church of Saint Bathild at Chelles was burned without the Emperor's knowledge, a large sum was devoted to its restoration. But if the shrines of the saints were reverenced, the palaces of the rival King were especially marked out for destruction. Attigny was burned, and nearly equal ruin fell upon Compiègne itself. Meanwhile the King had fled to Etampes, in the immediate territory of the Duke, while Hugh himself was collecting his forces at Paris. At last the German host came within sight of the ducal city. Otto now deemed that he had done enough for vengeance. He had shown that the frontiers of Germany were not to be invaded with impunity; he had come to Paris, not to storm or blockade the city, but to celebrate his victorious march with the final triumph of a pious bravado. He sent a message to the Duke to say that on the Mount of Martyrs he would sing such a Hallelujah to the martyrs as the Duke and people of Paris had never heard. He performed his vow; a band of clergy were gathered together on the sacred hill, and the German host sang their Hallelujah in the astonished ears of the men of Paris. This done, the mission of Otto was over, and after three days spent within sight of Paris, the Emperor turned him to depart into his own land.[136]

Such, at least, is the tale as told by the admirers of the Imperial devotee. In the hands of the monk of Rheims the story assumes quite another shape, and in the hands of the panegyrist of the house of Anjou it inevitably grows into a legend.[137] Richer tells us how the Emperor stood for three days on the right bank of the river, while the Duke was gathering his forces on the left; how a German Goliath challenged any man of France to single combat, and presently fell by the dart of a French, or perhaps Breton, David;[138] how Otto, seeing the hosts which were gathering against him, while his own forces were daily lessening, deemed that it was his wisest course to retreat.[139] As for the details of the retreat, our stories are still more utterly contradictory. One loyal French writer makes Lothar, at the head of the whole force of France and Burgundy, chase the flying Emperor to the banks of the Maes, whose waters swallowed up many of the fugitives.[140] The monk of Rheims transfers the scene of the German mishap to the nearer banks of the Aisne,[141] while the Maes is with him the scene of a friendly conference between the two Kings, in which Lothar, distrusting his vassals at Paris, deems it wiser to purchase the good-will of the Emperor by the cession of all his claims upon Lotharingia.[142] The most striking details come from the same quarter from which we get the picture of the Hallelujah on Montmartre. The Emperor, deeming that he had had enough of vengeance, departed on the approach of winter;[143] he reached the Aisne and proposed to encamp on its banks. But by the advice of Count Godfrey of Hennegau, who warned him of the dangers of a stream specially liable to floods, he crossed with the greater part of his army, leaving only, on the dangerous side, a small party with the baggage.[144] It was on this party that Lothar, hastening on with a small force, fell suddenly, while a sudden rise of the stream hindered either attack or defence on the part of the main armies.[145] Otto then sends a boat across with a challenge, proposing that one or the other should allow his enemy to cross without hindrance, and that the possession of the disputed lands should be decided by the result of the battle which should follow.[146] 'Nay rather,' cried Count Geoffrey, probably the famous Grisegonelle of Anjou, 'let the two Kings fight out their differences in their own persons, and let them spare the blood of their armies.'[147] 'Small then, it seems,' retorted Count Godfrey in wrath, 'is the value you put upon your King. At least it shall never be said that German warriors stood tamely by while their Emperor was putting his life in jeopardy.'[148] At this moment, when we are looking for some scene of exciting personal interest, the curtain suddenly falls, and this, our most detailed narrator, turns away from the fortunes of Emperors and Kings to occupy himself with his immediate subject, the acts of the Bishops of Cambray.[149]

Putting all our accounts together it is hard to say whether, in a military point of view, the expedition of Otto the Second was a success or a failure. If his design was to take Paris, he certainly failed. If he simply wished to avenge his own wrongs and to show that Germany could not be insulted with impunity, he undoubtedly succeeded. In either case the political gain was wholly on the German side. King and Duke acted together during the campaign; but each, in its course, learned to distrust the other, and each found it expedient to seek the friendship of the Emperor as a check against his rival.[150] And more than all, the Imperial rights over Lotharingia were formally acknowledged by Lothar, and were not disputed again for some ages.[151]

This campaign of 976 has a special interest just now, as its earlier stages read, almost word for word, like a forestalling of the events of the present year of wonders. How far its later stages may find their counterpart in the great warfare now going on, it is not for us to guess. But it is a campaign which marks a stage in the history of Europe. It is the first war that we can speak of--a war waged between Germany and anything which has even the feeblest claim to be called an united France. When Otto the Great marched against Paris and Rouen, he was fighting in the cause of the King of the West Franks, the lawful over-lord of the Dukes against whom he was fighting. When Otto the Second marched against Paris, he was fighting against King and Dukes alike, and King and Dukes between them had at their call all the lands of the strictly French speech, the tongue of oil. Aquitaine of course, and the other lands of the tongue of oc, had no part or lot in the matter; then, as in latter times, there were no Frenchmen south of the Loire. But if the expedition of Otto was in this sense the first German invasion of France, it was also for a long time the last. It is not often that Imperial armies have since that day entered French territory at all. The armies of Otto the Fourth appeared in the thirteenth century at Bouvines, and the armies of Charles the Fifth appeared in the sixteenth century in Provence. But Bouvines, lying in the dominions of a powerful and rebellious vassal, was French only by the most distant external allegiance, and Provence, in the days of Charles the Fifth, was still a land newly won for France, and the Imperial claims over it were not yet wholly forgotten. Both invasions touched only remote parts of the kingdom, and in no way threatened the capital. Since the election of Hugh Capet made Paris for ever the head of France and of all the vassals of the French Kingdom, the city has been besieged and taken by pretenders, native and foreign, to the Capetian Crown, but it has never, till our own century, been assailed by the armies of the old Teutonic realm. The fall of the first Buonaparte was followed by a surrender of Paris to a host which called up the memories alike of Otto of Germany and of Henry of England. The fall of the second Buonaparte is followed before our own eyes by the siege of Paris, the crowning point of a war whose first stages suggest the campaign of the Second Otto, but which, for the mighty interests, at stake, for the long endurance of besieger and besieged, rather suggests the great siege at the hands of Sigefrith. But all alike are witnesses to the position which the great city of the Seine has held ever since the days of Odo. Paris is to France not merely its greatest city, the seat of its government, the centre of its society and literature. It is France itself; it is, as it has been so long, its living heart and its surest bulwark. It is the city which has created the kingdom, and on the life of the city the life of the kingdom seems to hang. What is to be its fate? Is some wholly different position in the face of France and of Europe to be the future doom of that memorable city? Men will look on its possible humiliation with very different eyes. Some may be disposed to take up the strain of the Hebrew prophet, and to say, 'How hath the oppressor ceased, the golden city ceased!' Others will lament the home of elegance and pleasure, and what calls itself civilization. We will, in taking leave of Paris, old and new, wind up with the warning, this time intelligible enough to be striking, of her own poet--

Francia cur latitas vires, narra, peto, priscas, Te majora triumphâsti quibus atque jugâsti Regna tibi? Propter vitium triplexque piaclum. Quippe supercilium, Veneris quoque feda venustas. Ac vestis preciosæ elatio te tibi tollunt! Afrodite adeo, saltem quo arcere parentes[152] Haud valeas lecto, monachas Domino neque sacras; Vel quid naturam, siquidem tibi sat mulieres, Despicis, occurant? Agitamus fasque nefasque. Aurea sublimem mordet tibi fibula vestem, Efficis et calidam Tyriâ camera preciosâ. Non præter chlamydem auratam cupis indusiari Tegmine, decusata tuos gemmis nisi zona Nulla fovet lumbos, aurique pedes nisi virgæ, Non habitus humilis, non te valet abdere vestis. Hæc facis; hæc aliæ faciunt gentes ita nullæ; Hæc tria ni linquas, vires regnumque paternum Omne scelus super his Christi, cujus quoque vates, Nasci testantur bibli: fuge, Francia, ab istis!

ART. VI.--The Established Church in Wales.

(1.) An Essay on the Causes which have Produced Dissent from the Established Church in Wales. By ARTHUR JAMES JOHNES. Third Edition.

(2.) Letters on the Social and Political Condition of Wales. By HENRY RICHARD. London: Jackson, Walford, and Hodder.

(3.) History of Nonconformity in Wales. By THOMAS REES, D.D. London: John Snow.

(4.) Hanes y Methodistiaid Calfinaidd gan. JOHN HUGHES.

(5.) Llyfryddiaeth y Cymry, gan y diweddar Barch. WILLIAM RAWLANDS. Llanidloes: John Pryse.

(6.) _The Church of the Cymry. A Letter to the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P._, from HENRY S. EDWARDS, B.A. Oxon., Vicar of Carnarvon. London: Longmans, Green, and Co.

(7.) The Church of England in Wales, in Seven Letters to the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P. By the Rev. WILLIAM REES, Liverpool.

The Act for the Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Irish Church was one of great importance for what it did, but of still greater importance for what it implied; for in that measure there was a distinct legislative recognition of certain general principles, which are susceptible of far wider application than to the particular case they were invoked to sustain. It disposed, once for all, of the fond fantasy that the State is bound in its collective capacity to have a conscience, and in obedience to the dictates of that conscience, to impose its own creed upon the community, as the established faith of the country, to be supported by the authority, and enforced by the sanction of law. It acknowledged the principle that where an established church never has been, or has ceased to be the church of the nation, and fails, therefore, in its professed function as the religious instructor of the people, it has no longer any raison d'être, and ought to be swept away as an anomaly and encumbrance. It recognised the fact, if not for the first time, at least with more distinctness and emphasis than was ever done before, that ecclesiastical property is national property, which the nation has a perfect right through its legitimate organ, the legislature, to apply to any purpose it may think fit, whether sacred or secular.

We need not wonder that when the Irish Establishment was abolished, men's minds should turn almost instinctively to the sister institution in Wales, as furnishing a case in many respects parallel, but in other respects still less admitting of justification. The discussion of this subject in Parliament last session, on the motion of Mr. Watkin Williams, did not take place, perhaps, under the most favourable auspices. But it was at least attended with this advantage, that it obliged those who oppose the Disestablishment of the Welsh Church to show their hand. As Mr. Gladstone, in addition to his many other merits as an orator, is the most accomplished debater in the House of Commons, we may safely assume that whatever could be said in defence of the Church in Wales, and in deprecation of its proposed severance from the State, was said by him with the utmost degree of plausibility and point. But certainly on a calm review of the arguments he used on that occasion, they do not appear to be very formidable.

It may be said, indeed, that the Prime Minister made no attempt to defend the Welsh Church. He abandoned it to the strongest condemnation pronounced upon it by its adversaries, for the 'gross neglect, corruption, nepotism, plunder,' to use his own words, by which it has been marked; and only tried to account for these evils by laying them all to the charge of 'Anglicizing prelates.' He admitted that, even granting what Churchmen claimed, namely, about one-fourth of the population as belonging to the Establishment,--a claim, let us say in passing, which in the face of notorious facts is simply preposterous--'the disproportion is very remarkable in the case of a Church purporting to be the Church of the nation.' He admitted, moreover, as a circumstance seriously militating against the Welsh Church, that 'so large a proportion of her members belong to the upper classes of the community, the classes who are most able to provide themselves with the ministrations of religion, and therefore, in whose special and peculiar interest it is most difficult to make any effectual appeal for public resources and support.' But while acknowledging all this, he resists the proposal for its disestablishment. On what grounds? First, on this ground--that there is no hostility in Wales to the Church Establishment, and that its existence does not, as in Ireland, produce alienation or bitterness of feeling between different classes of the community. But this argument, if it were well founded in fact, which unhappily it is as far as possible from being, does not address itself in the least to the reason or justice of the case. Even if the Welsh people were so devoid of spirit and self-respect as to feel it no grievance to have a costly Church Establishment, which exists almost exclusively for the benefit of the rich, saddled upon their necks, surely that is no proof that it is right to perpetuate the privileges of a body, whose history for generations has been marked by 'gross neglect, corruption, and nepotism,' and which, purporting to be the Church of a nation, does not pretend, even according to the claims of its most audacious advocates, to number among its adherents more than one-fourth of the nation. But Mr. Gladstone is wholly misinformed as to the fact. Because the Nonconformists of Wales are an eminently peaceable, loyal, and orderly people, and do not proclaim their grievances with clamour and menace, it is imagined that they do not feel the gross injustice and indignity of the position they occupy. They do feel it deeply, and they are made to feel it, by events continually occurring in their social and political life, which all spring from this one root of bitterness. We need only refer in illustration of what we mean to the circumstances which attended and followed the last general election. Every form of unfair pressure was brought to bear upon the people to induce them to vote against their convictions, and many of those who had the courage to resist, were mercilessly evicted from their holdings, or otherwise injured and persecuted. All this sprang from the existence of the Established Church, as is evidenced by the fact, that in every instance we believe without a single exception--the oppressors were Churchmen and the sufferers Nonconformists.

The other, and the only other, argument of Mr. Gladstone is this--that except for conventional purposes, there is really no Church in Wales, that the Welsh Church is only a part of the Church of England, and cannot therefore be dealt with separately. We confess we are not very much dismayed by this difficulty; for we can remember the time when the same reason was urged to show the impossibility of touching the Irish Church. Properly speaking, we were told there was no Church of Ireland, but only the united Church of England and Ireland--the two churches having, at the time of the Union, been joined together by a compact so solemn and binding, that Her Majesty the Queen could not give her consent to any measure for dissolving that compact, without incurring the danger of committing perjury and bringing her crown into jeopardy. And as for providing legislation for Ireland distinct from that of England, the suggestion was scouted as an absurdity. Ireland was as much a part of the United Kingdom as Yorkshire or Lancashire, and must be governed by the same laws. The sense of justice, however, and the urgent necessities of the case, triumphed over these foregone conclusions.

There is one fact that gives a sort of sinister unity to the religious history of Wales through all its vicissitudes. It is this: that the influence of its relations with England, whether they were hostile or friendly, whether under Saxon or Norman rule, whether in Catholic or Protestant times, has been, in this respect, uniformly disastrous. We can only glance very briefly at the proofs of this allegation. Without raising again the controversial dust which envelopes the discussion as to the time and manner of the first introduction of Christianity into this island, we may at least assume it as an admitted historical fact, that early in the second century the Gospel had been planted here, and that long before the Saxon invasion there was a flourishing Christian Church in Britain. In the records of the first three or four hundred years of its existence, we find that many large collegiate establishments were formed and dedicated to religion and literature. From these institutions went forth men thoroughly instructed in the learning of their times, some of them bearing the fame of their country's piety and erudition to the uttermost parts of Europe. In the oecumenical councils summoned under Constantine the Great and his sons, in the third and fourth centuries, at Arles, at Nice, and at Sardica, to decide the great Donatist and Arian controversies that disturbed the unity of the Catholic faith, we are told that the British Churches were represented by men who bore an honourable part in the defence of sound doctrine; for Athanasius himself testifies that Bishops from Britain joined in condemnation of the heresy of Arius, and in vindication of himself. But when, in the sixth century, the Pope sent the celebrated Augustin, as a missionary, to convert the pagan Anglo-Saxon inhabitants of this island to Christianity, there came on the British Church a time of terrible persecution. Having resolutely refused to recognise the papal authority, Augustin and his successors, in accordance with the policy of that persecuting Church which they represented, incited their Saxon converts to make war upon the British recusants, exasperating the national animosities, already sufficiently bitter between the two races, by adding to it the fanatical frenzy of religious bigotry. For many ages, therefore, the Britons were liable to frequent incursions from their Saxon neighbours, who, instigated by the councils of Rome, invaded their country, destroying their churches, burning their monasteries, and putting to death the pious and learned monks, who, in the seclusion of those establishments, were pursuing the peaceable occupations of literature and religion.[153] This struggle between the ancient British Church on the one side, and that of Rome, backed by the Saxon sword, on the other, continued for centuries. And when the Saxon conquerors had in their turn to succumb to the Norman invaders, that struggle was renewed with greater fierceness than ever. Religion was again unscrupulously used as an instrument of State, the Norman princes forcing ecclesiastics of their own race into all the higher offices of the Church in Wales, not from any regard for the spiritual interests of the people, but that they might aid in extinguishing the national spirit of the Cymri, and in subjugating the country to the Norman yoke. This policy, of course, failed, as it richly deserved to fail. The bishops and other dignitaries thus intruded upon the country were only safe when surrounded by bodies of armed retainers, and whenever the Cymric arms won a victory in the field, the interlopers had to flee to England to save themselves from popular indignation. About the end of the twelfth century, the Welsh princes appealed to the Pope for a redress of these intolerable wrongs. A petition couched in eloquent language was presented to his Holiness from Llywelyn, Prince of Gwynedd; Gwenwynwyn and Madoc, Princess of Powys; Gruffydd, Maelgwn, Rhys, and Meredith, sons of Rhys, Prince of South Wales. It is curious, in reading this document, to observe that some of the ecclesiastical grievances of which the British princes complain, are precisely those which the friends of the Church in Wales are still reiterating in our own day:--

'And, first, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as a matter of course, sends us English bishops, ignorant of the manners and language of our land, who cannot preach the word of God to the people, nor receive their confessions but through interpreters.

'And besides, these bishops that they send us from England, as they neither love us nor our land, but rather persecute and oppress us with an innate and deep-rooted hatred, seek not the welfare of our souls; their ambition is to rule over us and not to benefit us; and on this account they do not but very rarely fulfil the duties of their pastoral office among us.

'And whatever they can lay their hands upon or get from us, whether by right or wrong, they carry into England, and waste and consume the whole of the profits obtained from us, in abbeys and lands given to them by the king of England. And like the Parthians, who shoot backwards from afar as they retreat, so do they from England excommunicate us as often as they are ordered so to do....

'Besides these things, when the Saxons (English) rush into Wales, the Archbishop of Canterbury puts the whole land under an interdict, and because we and our people defend our country against the Saxons and other enemies, he places us and our people under judgment of excommunication, and causes those bishops whom he sent among us to proclaim this judgment, which they are ready to do on all occasions. The consequence is, that every one of our people who falls on the field of blood, in defence of the liberty of his country, dies under the curse of excommunication.'

When the Reformation came, the influence of the connection with England was, if possible, still more disastrous on the religious interests of Wales. 'The robbery in times of peace,' says Mr. Johnes, 'proved worse than the spoliation in the times of war, and the rapacity of the Reformation was added to the rapacity of Popery.' He then describes, in language of eloquent indignation, how the ecclesiastical endowments of the Principality were pitilessly plundered by being bestowed upon laymen, the descendants of the Norman invaders, or by being alienated from the Church of Wales to endow English bishoprics and colleges! For the last century and a half, again, the policy of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities in dealing with the Welsh Church has, it would seem, been steadily directed to the extinction of the Welsh language and nationality by the appointment of Englishmen to bishoprics, canonries, deaneries, and most of the richest livings in Wales, in utter contempt of all decency. And now when, by the legitimate operation of a State establishment of religion, nearly the whole nation has been alienated from the Church, so that it has become a mere encumbrance in the land, we are told that Wales is so inseparably united with England that it cannot expect to be rid of the incubus until England has made up its mind to deal with its own Church Establishment.

But what we have to do with most especially at present is the Protestant Church Establishment in Wales, and our indictment against it is this, that at no period of its history has it fulfilled, in anything approaching to a satisfactory manner, its proper function as the religious instructor of the Welsh people. We have a chain of testimonies in support of this allegation that are unimpeachable as to their quality, and of overwhelming force in their concurrence and cumulation of evidence. We are anxious to make this point clear, because the line of defence that has been lately taken by the friends of the Church of England in Wales is to this effect. It is true, they say, that towards the middle of the last century the Church had fallen into a deep sleep, and so afforded occasion, and to some degree excuse, for the rise of Nonconformity, which was previously almost unknown in Wales. And then they point in vague and sounding phrases to the golden age that preceded that period of spiritual torpor, when the Church, alive to her high mission, ruled by native bishops, who understood the language and commanded the confidence and veneration of the country, comprehended and cared for within her ample fold the whole population of the Principality. Dissent, we are assured, is in Wales an exotic of quite modern growth, which, it is further implied, will prove to have a very ephemeral life, like Jonah's gourd, which came up in a night and perished in a night. Now all this is pure fiction. Dissent is not a thing of modern growth in Wales. It has existed more or less for 230 years, and whatever of vital religion has existed there during the whole of that period, has been owing far more to its influence than to that of the Established Church. It is not correct to say that the Church 'fell asleep' in the last century, simply because it had never been awake. 'The wisest thing, in my opinion, that our Church friends can do,' said Mr. Henry Richard, in his address at the opening of Brecon College--

'instead of pluming themselves on their antiquity, would be to cut off, so far as they can, all connection with and all memory of their past history in Wales. The succession through which they derive their ecclesiastical lineage, in this country at least, is about as unapostolical a succession as can be conceived--a succession of simony, pluralism, nepotism; of ignorance, incompetence, and utter indifference to the duties of their own high office and the claims of the unfortunate people left to their charge, on the part of those who called themselves the priests of God.'

And to begin with what must surely be considered as the first and most solemn duty of a Protestant Church, that of supplying the people of whom it professes to take charge with the Word of God in their own language, how does the account stand with the Welsh Established Church in this respect? Dr. Llewellyn, the learned author of the 'Historical Account of the Welsh Versions of the Bible,' states

'that for upwards of seventy years from the settlement of the Reformation by Queen Elizabeth, for near one hundred years from Britain's separation from the Church of Rome, there were no Bibles in Wales, but only in the cathedrals of parish churches and chapels. There was no provision made for the country or the people in general; as if they had nothing to do with the word of God, at least no further than they might hear it in their attendance on public worship once in the week.'

But how did the ecclesiastical authorities act in reference to the translation of the Scriptures into the Welsh language, even for use in the churches? In the year 1563, an Act of Parliament (5 Eliz. c. 28) was passed, ordering this work to be done. In the preamble it is recited,--

'That her Majesty's most loving and obedient subjects inhabiting within her Majesty's dominion and country of Wales, being no small part of this realm, are utterly destitute of God's Holy Word, and do remain in the like or rather more darkness and ignorance than they were in the time of Papistry.'

It was therefore enacted that the Bible, consisting of the New Testament and the Old, together with the book of Common Prayer and the Administration of the Sacraments, should be translated into the British or Welsh tongue. The duty of seeing this done was devolved upon the Bishops of St. Asaph, Bangor, St. David's, Llandaff, and Hereford, and they were subjected to a penalty of £40 each if the work were not accomplished by March, 1566. The New Testament was translated within the given period, principally by William Salesbury, a lay gentleman, with some help from the Bishop and Precentor of St. David's; but there was no version of the Old Testament for twenty years later, and that was done not by the initiative or at the instigation of the bishops, but by the spontaneous piety and patriotism of one individual, Dr. William Morgan, vicar of Llanshaidr-yn-Mochnat, Denbighshire, whose name ought to be held in everlasting veneration by all Welshmen. This was published in 1588. He acknowledges, indeed, that he received some encouragement and help from the Bishops of St. Asaph and Bangor. Ingenious apologies have been urged for the gross neglect of the bishops in fulfilling their commission. But Dr. Morgan, in the Latin dedication of his Bible to Queen Elizabeth, ascribes it to what, no doubt, was the true cause, mere 'idleness and sloth.'[154] There was no other edition of the Welsh Bible for thirty-two years. But in the year 1620, Dr. Parry, Bishop of St. Asaph, brought out a new issue. This also seems to have been the result of individual zeal, for in his preface Dr. Parry says, that the former edition having been exhausted, and many or most of the churches being either without any or with only worn-out and imperfect copies, and nobody, so far as he could learn, even thinking of a republication, he was moved to undertake the work.[155] This, likewise, was exclusively for use in the churches. The first edition of the Bible for popular use was published in an octavo form in 1630, but does not seem to have originated with the Church in any way. 'The honour,' says Dr. Llewellyn, 'of providing for the first time a supply of this kind for the inhabitants of Wales, is due to one or more citizens of London,' namely Mr. Alderman Heylin, 'sprung from Wales,' and Sir Thomas Middleton, also a native of the Principality, and an alderman of London.[156] For the next half century there was only one edition of the Scriptures in Welsh published by Churchmen, a large folio of 1,000 copies, for the pulpits of the churches. But during the same period the persecuted Nonconformists--Walter Cradock, Vavasor Powell, Stephen Hughes, Thomas Gouge, and David Jones--published nine editions, consisting of about 30,000 copies of the whole Bible, and above 40,000 of the New Testament separately. During the subsequent half-century (from 1718 to 1769) we acknowledge with cordial gratitude that several large editions were issued by the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, two of them at the instigation of the Rev. Griffith Jones, and one at the instigation of Dr. Llewellyn, a dissenting minister. But let it be observed that the former period, from the accession of Queen Elizabeth to the beginning of the eighteenth century, synchronises as nearly as possible with the golden age which some members of the Welsh Church fondly believe to have existed in the history of that institution.

But let us now enquire how, in other respects, the Established Church in Wales discharged its duties as the teacher of the people. In the absence of the Bible there was, of course, all the more need for personal earnestness and activity on the part of its ministers in preaching the word and catechising, and the regular and solemn administration of all religious ordinances. But how was it in this respect during the beatific period, when, as some of the modern advocates of the Church exultingly declare, there was 'no dissent in Wales?' We will begin our inquiries with the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In the year 1560, Dr. Meyrick, Bishop of Bangor, writes that he had only two preachers in his diocese. Strype, in his 'Life of Archbishop Parker,' describes the condition of the bishoprics of Llandaff and Bangor, one in South and the other in North Wales, about the year 1563, as follows. The former had been two or three years, in effect, void, and wanted a vigilant bishop to manage that diocese. But the great dilapidations had so impoverished that see, that few who were honest and able would be persuaded to meddle with it.

As for Bangor (he continues), the diocese was also much out of order, there being no preaching used, and pensionary concubinacy openly continued, which was allowance of concubines to the clergy, by paying a pension, notwithstanding the liberty of marriage granted.

... So that Wales being in an evil condition as to religion, 'the inhabitants remaining still greatly ignorant and superstitious, the Queen left it particularly to the care of the Archbishop to recommend fit persons for those two sees now to be disposed of.'

In 1588, John Penry published his 'Exhortation unto the People and Governors of Her Majesty's Country of Wales,' every line of which was aflame with the fire of a righteous and eloquent indignation at the negligent bishops and 'unpreaching ministers,' to whose tender mercies his 'poor country of Wales' was abandoned. We need not quote at large from the melancholy picture he gives in this and his other pamphlets of the state of the Principality in that day, as his writings have been rendered familiar to many of our readers by Dr. Waddington's 'Life of Penry,' and Dr. Rees's 'History of Nonconformity in Wales.' We will therefore cite only one or two pregnant sentences:--

'This I dare affirm and stand to, that if a view of all the registries of Wales be taken, the name of that shire, that town, or of that parish, cannot be found, where, for the space of six years together within these twenty-nine years, a godly and learned minister hath executed the duty of teacher, and approved his ministry in any mean sort.... If I utter an untruth let me be reproved, and suffer as a slanderer; if a truth, why should not I be allowed.'

The Rev. Henry T. Edwards, the author of the very able and vigorous pamphlet mentioned at the head of this article, has permitted himself, in an evil moment, and in stress of argument and information, in defence of the Welsh Church of those days, to describe this noble-minded and devoted Christian and patriot in very opprobrious terms, as 'a sour-minded Puritan, recognising no truth save in his own interpretation of the written Word,' &c., &c. But Strype, at least, cannot be called 'a sour-minded Puritan.' Let us then revert to his testimony in reference to precisely the same period. In his 'Annals of the Reformation'[157] he makes the following statement. We borrow Dr. Rees's summary:--

'Dr. William Hughes, Bishop of St. Asaph, was accused, in the year 1587, the year before the publication of Penry's "Exhortation," of misgoverning his diocese and of tolerating the most disgraceful abuses. When the case was inquired into, it was found that the Bishop himself held sixteen rich livings in commendam; that most of the great livings were in possession of persons who lived out of the country; that one person who held two of the greatest livings in the diocese boarded in an alehouse; and that only three preachers resided upon their livings viz., Dr. David Powell, of Ruabon; Dr. William Morgan, of Llanrhaidr-yn-Mochnat, the translator of the Bible; and the parson of Llanvechan, an aged man, about eighty years old.'

We will now follow the history of the Welsh Church into the reign of James I. At that time, there lived and laboured in Wales a very remarkable man, the Rev. Rees Pritchard, Vicar of Llandovery, in Carmarthenshire, the author of a work which has had a larger circulation in the Principality than any book except the Bible. It is entitled 'Canwyll y Cymry,' or, 'The Welshman's Candle,' a series of moral and religious poems, most simple in their language, and even slovenly in their metrical composition, but full of poetry and feeling, and thoroughly saturated with evangelical truth. He flourished between the years 1616 and 1644. John Penry, in his most vehement remonstrances, does not employ stronger language to portray the utter ignorance, irreligion, and immorality in which the people were sunk, than does this excellent clergyman. But what we have specially to do with now is the testimony he bears as to the condition of the Church, a testimony all the more unimpeachable, as he continued through life a member and a minister of that Church. In one of his poems, after describing all classes as wholly given up to every species of depravity, he adds that the clergy were asleep, leaving the people to wallow in their sins, and to live as they liked, unwarned and unrebuked.[158] In another poem, he puts the clergy at the head of various classes, whom he enumerates, who were 'contending with each other, which of them should most daringly affront the Most High.' There is evidence still more conclusive, if possible, in the reports presented to the King by Archbishop Laud, between the years 1633 and 1638, which are still extant among the Lambeth MSS. This bigoted prelate had, it seems, in those years, been specially instigating the Bishops of St. David's and Llandaff to persecute without mercy those in their dioceses who were guilty of 'inconformity;' that is, who refused to read 'The Book of Sports,' and other similar obligations which were laid on the consciences of the clergy. After commemorating the success with which the Bishop of St. David's had silenced one Roberts, a lecturer, for inconformity, and reduced three or four others to submission, he adds: 'He complains much, and surely with cause enough, that there are few ministers in those poor and remote places that are able to preach and instruct the people.' And the Bishop of St. Asaph tells Laud that 'they were not anywhere troubled with inconformity; but that he heartily wished that they might as well be acquainted with superstition and profaneness.'

In the year 1651, there was published a translation in the Welsh language of the once celebrated 'Marrow of Modern Divinity.' This translation was by the Rev. John Edwards, one of the clergy ejected by the Parliamentary Commission appointed under the Commonwealth. In the preface, he deplores the neglect into which the Welsh language had fallen, and declares that, 'among the Church clergy (y Dyscawdwyr Eglwysig), scarcely one in fifteen knew how to read and write Welsh.' The reader will observe that we are following our chain of evidence link by link. In 1677, a work was published in Welsh entitled 'Carwr y Cymry,' that is, 'The Welshman's Friend; an Exhortation to his dear countrymen for the sake of Christ and their own souls, to search the Scriptures according to Christ's command, John v. 39.' This is supposed to have been written by a clergyman of the name of Oliver Thomas. The introduction is in the form of an earnest and affectionate address to 'Welsh Churchmen.' In this he says:--

'Often does sorrow beyond measure strike my heart in observing and reflecting upon the great deficiency and the utter neglect which prevails among us Welsh Churchmen, in taking pains to teach our flocks conscientiously, through our not giving ourselves with full purpose of heart to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. We are ourselves, many of us, unskilful in the word of righteousness, and therefore incompetent to direct others.... Yea, my dear brethren, give me permission to say, what it pains me to be obliged to say, that in each of the Welsh bishoprics forty or sixty churches may be found without any one in them on Sundays, even in the middle of summer, when the roads are driest, and the weather finest.'[159]

We have brought our chain of testimonies down to near the end of the seventeenth century. But from that time to our own they are still more abundant.

In 1721 was published, 'A View of the State of Religion in the Diocese of St. David's, about the beginning of the Eighteenth Century,' by Dr. Erasmus Saunders. It contains a most deplorable picture of the condition of the Church, as regards both its material and spiritual interests. He describes some churches as totally decayed; they

'do only serve for the solitary habitations of owls and jackdaws; such are St. Daniel's, Castelhan, Kilvawyr, Mountain, Capel Colman, and others in Pembrokeshire; Mount Llechryd, in Cardiganshire; Aberllynog, in Breconshire; Nelso, in Gower, Glamorganshire, and others in Carmarthenshire. And it is not to be doubted, but as there are districts of land, so there were originally just endowment of tythes that did belong to all those several churches; but whatever they were, they are now alienated, the churches, most of them, demolished, the use for which they were intended almost forgotten, unless it be at Llanybrec, where, I am told, the improprietor or his tenant has let that church unto the neighbouring Dissenters, who are very free to rent it for the desirable opportunity and pleasure of turning a church into a conventicle'--(pp. 23, 4.)

'As the Christian service is thus totally disused in some places, there are other some that may be said to be but half served, there being several churches where we are but rarely, if at all, to meet with preaching, catechising, or administering of the Holy Communion. In others, the service of the prayers is but partly read, and that perhaps but once a month, or once in a quarter of a year.... The stipends are so small, that a poor curate must sometimes submit to serve three or four churches for £10 or £12 a-year.'

He then refers, though with great forbearance and tenderness, to the low type of character which such a state of things produced among the clergy; and then exclaims, sorrowfully, 'Such is the faint shadow that remains among us of the public service of religion!'

'And now,' continues the author, 'what Christian knowledge, what sense of piety, what value for religion are we reasonably to hope for in a country thus abandoned, and either destitute of churches to go to, or of ministers to supply them, or both? Or how can it well consist with equity and conscience to complain of the ignorance and errors of an unhappy people in such circumstances? They are squeezed to the utmost to pay their tithes and what is called the church dues (though, God knows, the Church is to expect little from it), and, at the same time, most miserably deprived of those benefits of religion which the payment of them was intended to support, and delivered up to ignorance and barbarity, which must be the certain consequence of driving away the ministers of religion, or of depressing or incapacitating them for their duty'--(p. 26.).

To aggravate the evils of all kinds already sufficiently rife in the Welsh Church, the English Government, about the beginning of the eighteenth century, adopted the practice, which it has continued ever since, of appointing Englishmen utterly ignorant of the Welsh language to Welsh bishoprics.[160] And the bishops, following the example thus set by those acting for the head of the Church, inundated the Principality with English clergymen, their own relatives and connections, to whom all the highest dignities and the richest livings were, almost without exception, assigned. A more monstrous abuse than this it is difficult to conceive, and yet it has been persevered in for 150 years in the face of all complaint and remonstrance, and in the teeth of the express judgment of the Church itself, which declares in its 26th Article that 'it is a thing plainly repugnant to the word of God, and to the custom of the primitive Church, to have public prayer in the church, or to minister the sacraments in a tongue not understanded of the people.' We need not wonder, therefore, that great prominence should be henceforth given by the friends of the Church to this, as one of the causes, if not, indeed, the sole cause, of its inefficiency and decay. How far they are justified in attaching such supreme importance to it we shall consider hereafter. But we shall for the present resume our series of testimonies to the matter of fact. Most of our readers will doubtless have heard of the Rev. Griffith Jones, of Llanddowror, the founder of the remarkable circulating schools, which, during the latter half of the eighteenth century, rendered such inestimable service to the people of the Principality. We cannot here enter upon the history of the life and labours of this admirable clergyman. If one man could have saved the Church in Wales, he would have saved it. But as Mr. Johnes has remarked with great sagacity--though he does not appear to see the inevitable inference to be drawn from the remark--'it is a truth but too well sanctioned by experience, that a few pious ministers are the weakness, and not the strength, of an establishment, when the majority of its ministers are sunk in indifference to their sacred duties.' Our object now, however, is merely to cite the Rev. Griffith Jones as a witness to the condition of the Church about the middle of the eighteenth century. In the year 1749 he published a letter in Welsh, on the 'Duty of Catechising Ignorant Children and People.' In that letter he observes that the

'peasantry cannot understand from sentences of deep learning in sermons the Articles of Faith without being catechised in them, which, at present, is more necessary, because there is among us such monstrosity (anferthwch) and such evil and barefaced craft in some places, as the frequent preaching of English to the Welsh people, not one jot more edifying or less ridiculous than the Latin service of the Papists in France. One author states that he could not help rebuking such clergymen, in spite of the spleen and wrath it was likely to bring upon him, viz., the lazy vicars and rectors, who have led a careless life from their youth, and have set their mind on keeping company, and going unsteadily from tavern to tavern, and not minding their books; in consequence of which they are as ignorant of their mother tongue as they are of Greek and Hebrew, and therefore read the service and preach in English, without sense or shame, in the most purely Welsh assemblies throughout the country. Not much better, if any, are those who patch up a sermon of mixed language and jargon sounds, inconsonant, dark, and unintelligible, to the great scandal and disgrace of the ministry, and to the grief, damage, and weariness of the congregation.'

There is one other eminent Welsh clergyman whom we must add to this cloud of witnesses before we speak of the rise of Methodism in Wales. The Rev. Evan Evans, better known, perhaps, by his Bardic name, Ieuan Brydydd Hir, was a man of learning and genius, a friend and correspondent of Bishop Percy and other literati of that age. He was especially well versed in ancient British literature, and published a Latin essay, Dissertatio de Bardis, containing Latin translations from the poems of Aneurin, Taliesin, and Llywarch Hen. In 1776, he published two volumes of Welsh sermons. To the first volume he prefixed a dedication to Sir W. W. Wynn in English, and an address to the reader in Welsh, in both of which he describes in bold and burning language the miserable state of the Church in Wales at that time. Here is one out of many extracts we might have given. After complaining that most of the gentry had 'thrown away all regard for religion and morality,' and that 'the ignorance and immorality of the lower class of the people was pitiful, owing to the slothfulness and neglect of many of the clergy,' he thus proceeds:

'As for the clergy, such of them as still enjoy the remaining emoluments of the Church might do some good in their generation if they were so disposed. But alas! so little has been done by the clergy of the Established Church in this way, that there is hardly a book or a sermon left behind by any of them to testify their fidelity in their vocation, for almost a hundred years past. It is a pity they should not do something to convince the world that they are ministers of the gospel. And it is a great pity that most of them are so scandalously ignorant of the language in which they are to do the duties of their function, that they can do very little to the edification of their flocks. Those who enjoy the richest benefices in the Church are most deficient in this respect, copying herein the Church of Rome very faithfully, and leaving their sheep to perish. And I am afraid that upon this and other accounts many sincere Christians abhor the sacrifice of the Lord, who were well disposed to the Church established. And such abominations, if continued, will make it desolate!

'Now, the question is what a faithful minister of the gospel ought to do in such dangerous times? I am very sure that some conscientious ministers of the gospel have suffered severely of late years under these lordly and tyrannic prelates. The number of such disinterested persons, it must be owned, was small, and every art and method have been used to discountenance them. If what I here aver be doubted, I appeal to the writings of the late pious and truly reverend Mr. Griffith Jones, of Llanddowror, who underwent the scurrilities of a venal priest hired by the bishops to bespatter him, though he was by the special grace of God without any stain or spot. By far the greater number of the clergy, like Gehazi, run after preferments, and have left the daughter of Zion to shift for herself. And his doom, in a spiritual sense, is likely to follow them and their successors.'

It is well known that the man who may be called the father of Welsh Methodism was Mr. Howell Harris. He was, and continued to the day of his death, a dutiful son of the Church. He applied for ordination, but was refused. He pressed his request for six years, but to no purpose. 'Wherever he went,' we quote again the language of a Welsh clergyman, 'as a simple and unoffending preacher of the gospel, either in the South or the North, he was denounced by the clergy from their pulpits, he was arrested by the magistrates, and persecuted by the rabble.[161] Now let us hear his own account of the reasons which induced him to commence and continue preaching to his countrymen. He describes his being taken before the magistrates at Monmouth, for the work of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, and then continues--

'After this, I was more satisfied than ever that my mission was from God, especially as I had so often applied for holy orders, and was rejected for no other reason than my preaching as a layman. I saw both from Scripture and the practice of the Church that the preaching of laymen was proper in times of necessity; and I thought that time of greater necessity could hardly be than the present, when the whole country lay in a lukewarm and lifeless condition. In many churches there was no sermon for months together; in some places nothing but a learned English discourse to an illiterate Welsh congregation; and where an intelligible sermon was preached, it was generally so legal, and so much in the spirit of the old covenant, that should any give heed to it, they could never be led thereby to Christ, the only way to God. Seeing these things, and feeling the love of Christ in my heart, I could not refrain from going about to propagate the gospel of my dear Redeemer.'[162]

The second great name in connection with the rise of Methodism in Wales, was the Rev. Daniel Rowlands, of Llangeitho, a man whose powers as a preacher are described by those who knew both, to have surpassed even those of Whitfield. The effect of his eloquence among his countrymen was extraordinary. It ran like a stream of electricity through the nation, kindling into life thousands who had been previously wrapped in spiritual torpor. Like Howell Harris, he was not merely content, but anxious to continue his ministrations in the Church. 'But he was cast out of the Church of England,' says one of his biographers, the Rev. J. C. Ryle, 'for no other fault than excess of zeal.' And what was the condition of the church, from which this over zealous man was expelled by Episcopal judgment? Mr. Ryle shall answer. 'This ejection took place at a time when scores of Welsh clergymen were shamefully neglecting their duties, and too often were drunkards, gamblers, and sportsmen, if not worse.'[163]

The inference from all this has already been drawn for us by a candid Churchman. Mr. Johnes, in his 'Essay on the Causes of Dissent in Wales,' says that he is irresistibly led to the conclusion 'that before the rise of Methodism in Wales the churches were as little attended by the great mass of people as they are now: and that indifference to all religion prevailed as widely then as dissent in the present day.' Of the early Methodists in Wales, as indeed of the early Nonconformists, it may be said most truly that they did not leave the Church of their own accord. Most of them clung to it with a most touching fidelity, in spite of incessant persecution and obloquy from those within its pale, and were at last thrust out of it, for no offence but the excess of their zeal for the moral and spiritual improvement of their countrymen. It is not necessary now to put in any defence for these men; for it has become the fashion of late among our Church friends in Wales, while denouncing modern Nonconformity as schismatic, turbulent, self-seeking, and other choice epithets with which we are so familiar in this connection, to speak with great tenderness and respect of the founders of Welsh dissent, and especially the early Methodists. Retaining, of course, that de haut en bas air of extreme candour and condescension which any Churchman, however small, thinks it right to assume when referring to any Dissenter, however illustrious for capacity and service, they do nevertheless admit that the men in question were admirable men, full of genuine zeal for evangelical truth and the salvation of souls. Nor do they scruple to deplore and censure the perverse policy which persecuted such men and drove them from the Church. Nay, in some cases, clergymen have even become their admiring and eulogistic biographers. But this is the old thing over again. 'Ye build the tombs of the prophets and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, if we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.' But then, unhappily, by displaying the same spirit towards the successors of these men, and branding them with the same epithets of contumely and reproach as their fathers applied to their fathers, and that for doing precisely the same work, they are witnesses unto themselves that they are the genuine children of them which persecuted the prophets.

Having brought our review down to the great revival of religion about the middle of the last century, let us now inquire what the Church has done since that time to make up for centuries of gross neglect or perfunctory service. It might have been thought that this stirring of spiritual life in the country, through other agencies than its own, would have roused it, were it from no better motive than that of jealous emulation, to make some effort to retain or recover its influence over the population. And this, indeed, has been the case to some extent within the last quarter of a century. But for nearly a hundred years after the appearance of Harris and Rowlands, during which all bodies of Dissenters were labouring incessantly for the evangelization of the Principality, the Church was settled on her lees. Her rulers not only winked at for their own profit, but actively maintained and promoted the existence of abuses as audacious and monstrous as ever dishonoured a Christian Church. Her clergy, wholly abandoned to themselves, with little or no episcopal supervision or stimulus, were content with enjoying their temporalities while they neglected their duties, leading lives of mere worldly ease, and sometimes much worse lives than that. If any reader should imagine we are indulging in exaggerations, we can refer him for exuberance of proof to Mr. Johnes' most able and admirable work, which we have already mentioned. It was published in 1832, and describes the state of things then in actual existence. The sole object of most of the alien bishops who had been and were in occupation of the Welsh sees, seemed to have been to provide for themselves and those of their own households. Never was episcopal nepotism carried to so daring an excess, with this peculiar and enormous aggravation, that 'in Wales every relation of a bishop is in language a foreigner; and his uncouth attempts to officiate in his church in a tongue unintelligible to himself, can be felt by his congregation as nothing better than a profanation of the worship of God.'[164] As a specimen of how the chief pastors of the Welsh Church acted in this matter, we subjoin an extract from a speech delivered in the House of Commons, in 1836, by Mr. Benjamin Hall, afterwards Lord Llanover, a gentleman whose name and memory ought to be held in grateful and honourable remembrance in the Principality, for the strenuous efforts he made in and out of Parliament to remedy many flagrant abuses in the educational and ecclesiastical institutions of the country, and to procure something like justice for Wales:--

'What he complained of most was the unbounded spirit of nepotism which seemed to take possession of some of these English Bishops the moment they took up this episcopal power in the Principality. He found that in the diocese of St. Asaph a relation of the late bishop held the following preferments:--He was dean and chancellor of the diocese, with the deanery house, worth about £40 a year; parish of Huellan, £1,500; St. Asaph, £426; Llan Nevydd, £300; Llanvair, £220; Darowain, £120; Chancellorship, from fees, £400;--making £3,006. Besides all this, he was lessee of Llandegele and Llanasaph, worth £600, and this all exclusive of the rectory of Cradley, in the diocese of Hereford, £1,200; vicarage of Bromyard, £500; prebend of Hereford, £50; portion of Bromyard, £50 at present, but it is expected on the death of an old life that this preferment will be worth £1,400. Thus he had no less than eleven sources of emolument, producing between six and seven thousand a-year. It appears also that his brother had about £3,000 a-year, and the total enjoyed by relations of the late bishop of the diocese alone, amounts to between seven and eight thousand. But it appeared, moreover, that the amount enjoyed by the bishop, and the relations of the former bishops alone, amounts to £23,679, and exceeds the whole amount enjoyed by all the other resident and native clergy put together.'

To what unseemly consequences the appointment of English clergymen to Welsh incumbencies must have led, our readers may conceive by imagining a number of Frenchmen installed in livings in England, and attempting to perform the service in the English language. Here are a few examples of the ludicrous scenes often witnessed in Welsh churches. They are taken from a speech delivered in 1852 by the Rev. Joseph Hughes, a very able clergyman, a native of the Principality, but residing then at Meltham:--

'The mistakes,' he says, 'that are made by Anglo-Welsh clergymen, both in the reading-desk and pulpit, are nearly as many as the words in a Welsh glossary. Some of these mistakes are of an absurd and revolting character, and subversive of that due solemnity which should be observed in the house of God. Yea, the meaning of different words and sentences of Scripture is often painfully associated in the minds of the people with those mistakes.'

Before citing these specimens, we may premise that if any of our readers should be acquainted with the Welsh language, they will immediately perceive how probable it is that the blunders described should have been committed by an Englishman trying to read Welsh, or rather, how next to impossible it is that he should not have committed some of them.

'Bishop Burgess, in pronouncing the blessing in Welsh, used to say, "The peace of God which passeth all vengeance." "Tangnefedd Duw yr hwn sydd uwchlaw pob dial."

'A clergyman of the name of Lewis preached at Chapel Colman, and while speaking of man's depravity, said, "Every man is exceedingly tall by nature." "Y mae pob dyn yn dal iawn wrth natur." He meant to say blind--yn ddall. The little men in the congregation looked at each other with great astonishment, and seemed to question the truth of the statement. I was present at the time, and heard this as well as other mistakes.

'The same clergyman, while officiating at Llandygwydd, committed the following blunder:--He made "Hail, King of the Jews," to mean "An old cow of straw, King of Ireland." "Hen fuwch wellt, Brenhin yr Ywerddon."

'Another, reading the words, "These things are good and profitable unto men," gave them this meaning, "These graves are good and wordly to men." "I beddau hin si da a bydol i dinion."

'Another Anglo-Welsh clergyman, in his sermon quoting the words, "but the righteous into life eternal," gave them the following sense, "but to some chickens the food of the geese"--"ond i rai cywion fwyd y gwyddau."

'A. B. officiating at ---- and reading the words, "let us here make three tabernacles," was understood to say, "let us here make three pans, one for thee, one for Moses, and one for Elias." "Gwnawn yma dair padell."

'A clergyman in the county of Pembroke, while reading the funeral service, made it to say, "it is sown the body of a beast." "Efe a hoir yn gorph anifail."

'A late dean in North Wales, in repeating the following beautiful lines,

"Ymddyrcha o Dduw'r nef uwch ben, Daear ac wybren hefyd,"

"Be thou exalted, O God of heaven, above the earth and firmament," gave them the following interpretation:--

"_Arise O God above the head Of two hens and the crows egg also_."

"Ymddyrcha o Dduw'r nef uwch _ban Dwy iar_ ac wy brân hefyd."

'Another dean, addressing his work-people at their drinkings, said, "pori yr ydych etto," "you are still grazing." His work-people not perceiving that the blunder was unintentional, thought their master treated them as brute beasts, and were much offended.

'Another clergyman reading that part of the "Venite," "In his hand are all the corners of the earth," said, "In his hand are all the afflictions of the earth," "gorthyrmderau'r ddaear."

'A clergyman reading, "The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint," was understood to say, "the back parts are sick, and the middle of the back faint." "Y pen ol sy glwyfus a'r hol ganol yn lesg."

'Another reading, "The crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain," "A'r gwyrgeimion a wneir yn uniawn, a'r geirwon yn ffyrdd gwastad," read it thus, "The crooked men shall be made straight, and the rough men, smooth ways;" leaving the women, I suppose, still crooked and rough.'

But while admitting, as who could hesitate to admit, that the practice so long followed of appointing Englishmen to all the higher ecclesiastical offices in Wales, could not fail to affect most injuriously the interests of the Welsh Church, we must utterly demur, as we have already intimated, to the exaggerated influence ascribed by the modern defenders of the Church to this circumstance, as though it were the sole cause of its inefficiency. For let us look a little more closely into the matter. The period to which the advocates of this theory are fond of reverting, as constituting the ideal era of the Established Church in Wales, when it was governed principally by native prelates, is, speaking in general terms, the interval between the accession of Queen Elizabeth and the reign of William and Mary, or to take the precise dates, adopted by those among them who have most carefully investigated the subject, from the years 1558 to 1715. They specify the names of twenty-four Welshmen elevated to Welsh sees during these 257 years. But what was done by these Cymric bishops for the spiritual good of the Principality? Mr. Johnes, whose work is the great repertory of information on all matters connected with this subject, mentions three out of the whole number who seem to have distinguished themselves by some service rendered to their country. First, Bishop Morgan, who translated the Bible into the Welsh language; but he did this not as bishop, but as the vicar of a small country parish in Denbighshire, and he undertook the work precisely because it had been neglected by the Welsh prelates to whom it had been entrusted. Second, Bishop Parry, who brought out a new edition of the Bible for use in the churches. Third, Bishop Owen, who succeeded to the diocese of St. Asaph in 1629, and of whom we are told that 'he began first by his order and decrees, to establish preaching in Welsh in St. Asaph parish church, and as it is supposed, in other parish churches, in his diocese. He repaired his cathedral at his own cost, and set up a new organ in it;'--expressions which evidently seem to imply, that these very simple and obvious duties had been neglected by his predecessors, though they also were native prelates. We have, also, seen a general statement that some of the others established and endowed schools in particular localities in Wales. Of most of the rest we know nothing, but of some of them we know something. We know of Bishop Hughes, of St. Asaph, that he held sixteen rich livings in commendam, and left his diocese in the disgraceful condition already described in the early part of this article. We know that under Bishop Meyrick, of Bangor, there were, by his own acknowledgment, only two preachers in his diocese; and that according to the testimony of Strype, the grossest scandals were openly practised by the clergy. We know that the four native bishops, who by the Act of Elizabeth, of 1563, were charged with translating the Scriptures into Welsh, so neglected their duty as that even the churches were left without Welsh Bibles for twenty-five years after that date. We know that for seventy years after the settlement of the Reformation, not a single edition of the Bible in the Welsh language was issued for the use of the people. We know that from 1640 to 1690, which forms a considerable portion of the vaunted era of Welsh bishops, Churchmen published only one edition of the Scriptures--a large folio, for use in the churches--while during the same interval the Nonconformists published nine editions. We know that the contributions of the 'native bishops' to the moral and religious literature of the Cymry are conspicuous by their absence. We have examined with some care Rowland's 'Cambrian Bibliography' ('Llyfryddiaeth y Cymry'), containing an account of all books published in the Welsh language from 1546 to 1800, and, between the years 1558 and 1715, the era of Welsh bishops, we have failed to discover a single work written in Welsh or translated into Welsh by any one of these prelates, except 'A Letter to the Welsh,' by Bishop Davies, introducing Salesbury's translation of the New Testament. Nor is there any proof that they helped or promoted in any important degree the publication of religious books in the Welsh language, while the Nonconformists of that age laboured indefatigably to enlighten the people through the press. Even Vicar Pritchard's work, 'The Welshman's Candle,' left by him in manuscript, and which, next to the Bible, had the greatest influence on the religious character of the country, was published by the care and at the expense of Mr. Stephen Hughes, a Nonconformist minister. But above all, we know what was the state of the Church and the country during, and at the end of, the reign of this long dynasty of Welsh bishops. It is described in the language already cited of Strype, and Penry, and Pritchard, and Edwards, and Thomas, and Erasmus Saunders, and Griffith Jones, and Howell Harris. And we beg our readers specially to observe, that all the witnesses we have summoned to depose to the character and condition of the Welsh Church during three centuries of its history, have been members of the Church itself. If there is one exception, it is that of John Penry. But he also was born in the Church, and baptized in the Church, and ordained in the Church, for we are told that he was 'a famous preacher of the University' and he had, moreover, the honour of being persecuted, imprisoned, and hung by the Church. With that one doubtful exception all the rest lived and died within its pale. We might, of course, have added a large number of witnesses from the ranks of Nonconformity, whose testimony, we believe, would have been quite as trustworthy. But we have preferred omitting whatever might be thought open to even the suspicion of sectarian prejudice. Let us remember, that several of the 'native bishops' lived several years into the beginning of the eighteenth century, and if they had exercised so blessed an influence on the Church and the country as it is now the fashion to affirm, that influence could not have suddenly vanished immediately after their death. Nemo repente fuit turpissimus is surely as applicable to a community as to an individual. And yet we know by the confession of all candid Churchmen, that when Griffith Jones and Howell Harris began their labours--the former in 1730, and the latter in 1735--the Welsh Church was in a most lamentable state of inefficiency and corruption.

The simple truth is, that the history of the Welsh Church is only a crucial illustration of the invariable and inevitable evils that attend State establishments of religion. It is true that in its case these evils appear in a somewhat aggravated form, from the attempt made by the English Government to treat Wales as a conquered country, and to employ the Church as an agent in the extinction of its language and nationality. But when the life of a Christian Church is made to depend not on the faith, love, and liberality of its own members, and the presence and blessing of its Divine Master, but upon the protection and patronage of the civil government, and when, as a necessary consequence, the administration of its affairs falls into the hands of worldly politicians, who use it as an instrument of State, what can be expected but what always has ensued, that its spiritual life should wither, until those who seek real religious nourishment from its breasts are driven in sheer desperation to seek it elsewhere?

Indeed, it is curious that the friends of the Welsh Church, while enumerating the secondary causes which have led to her ruin, do not find their way, which they may do by a single step, to the right conclusion as to the primary cause from which all the others spring. Our Church, they say, has suffered grievous injustice from the alienation of her revenues, from the appointment of unqualified persons to all her highest offices, from the most flagrantly corrupt use of patronage, from the neglect of native talent, from laxity of godly discipline. But who has alienated her revenues? The State. Who has made those unfitting appointments? The State. Who has exercised patronage so corruptly? The State and its nominees, the bishops. Who has overlooked native talent? Again, the State and its nominees. Who has neglected to enforce godly discipline? Still, the State and its nominees. Yet, when it is proposed to strike away the fetters which bind them to the power that has thus maltreated and oppressed them, they hug their chains with frantic vehemence, and even use them as weapons with which to assail those who would fain assist in their liberation.

But let us now inquire into the condition of the Church in our own day. And in the phrase 'our own day,' we suppose we may include a period of twenty-five years. We have previously observed that, for a long time after the revival of religion which stimulated the Dissenters in Wales to such extraordinary activity in providing the means of religious instruction for the people, the Church continued sunk in utter apathy. It is impossible to find a more conclusive illustration of this, than is afforded by the following statement of the comparative progress made in church and chapel accommodation during the first half of the present century. It is founded on the Census Returns of 1851, and appears in Mr. Richards's 'Letters on the Social and Political Condition of Wales,' where it is cited on the authority of a very accomplished statistician, the late Mr. Plint of Leeds. North Wales, in 1801, stood thus as to religious accommodation:--

Proportion to all Sittings Sittings Church of England 99,216 75·2 All others 32,664 24·8 ------- ----- Total 131,880 100·0

In the fifty years following, the population increased from 252,765 to 412,114, or 63 per cent. To have kept up the ratio of sittings to population by each of these sections of religionists, the former should have supplied 62,505 sittings, and it did supply 16,164. The latter ought to have supplied 20,576, and it did supply 217,928. The Church of England fell short of its duty 73·5 per cent., and all other denominations exceeded it 950 per cent. The ratio of sittings to population, which, in 1801, was 52·1 per cent. (5·9 less than the proper standard, according to Mr. Horace Mann), was, in 1851, 88·9--that is, 30 per cent. above it.

South Wales, in 1801, stood thus:--

Sittings. Proportion to all Sittings. Church of England 133,514 61·8 All others 82,443 38·2 ------- ----- Total 215,957 100·0

The population increased from 289,892 to 593,607, or 105·5 per cent. The quota of sittings required of the Church was 140,854; it did provide 15,204. The other denominations ought to have provided 86,975; they did provide 270,510. The Church of England fell short of its duty 89 per cent.; the other denominations exceeded it 211 per cent. The ratio of sittings to population in 1801 was 74·7 per cent., and in 1851, 84·5. Can the force of antithesis go further.[165]

But we must descend a little more into detail, and furnish some practical illustrations, still taken from the testimony of Churchmen themselves, as to the condition of their Church in Wales in these modern times. In 1849, Sir Benjamin Hall made a speech in the House of Commons, in which he described the state of things at that time, especially in the diocese of St. David's. He spoke of the total neglect of archidiaconal visitations, of the small number of services performed in the diocese, and of the ruinous and deserted state of the churches. Here are a few extracts from his statement, taken, we believe, from the Report of the Commissioners on Education:--

'No. 1. Kemys Hundred.--In the whole country between Fishguard on the north, and the Precelly mountain on the south, there is no day-school, and the state of the church exemplifies the neglect in which the population of the parishes are left. The churches of Llandeilo and Maenchlogag are in ruins. In that of Morfyl the panes of the chancel window were all out, the inside of the church wet, as if just rinsed with water--indeed it had been, for the afternoon was raining.

'No. 2. Hasguard.--School held in the church, where the master and four little children were ensconced in the chancel, amidst lumber, round a three-legged grate full of burning sticks, without funnel or chimney for the smoke to escape; how they bore it I cannot tell. There had been no churchwarden in the parish for the last ten years, nor, it is believed, for a much longer period.

'No. 3. Llanafan Fechan.--Mr. Rees, farmer, who lives close to the church, informed me that divine service was very seldom performed here, unless there are banns to publish, a wedding, or a funeral.

'No. 4. Llandulais.--This church is a barn-like building with large holes in the roof, evincing every symptom of neglect and discomfort.

'No. 5. Llanfihangel Abergwessin.--No service performed in this church five out of six Sundays for want of a congregation.

'No. 6. Llanfihangel Bryn Pabuan.--Divine service not often performed here, except a wedding or funeral takes place. The vicar rides by on a Sunday afternoon, but seldom has occasion to alight and do duty, from the want of a congregation.

'No. 7. Llanfair tref Helygon,--The parish church was in ruins many years ago; the oldest inhabitant does not remember it standing.

'No. 8. Llandegley.--The clergyman is forbidden to have his horses in the churchyard, but he puts in two calves. The school is held in the church, into which the belfry opens, which is open to the churchyard. Calves are still turned into the churchyard, and, I was told, still sleep in the belfry.

'No. 9. Llangybi, four miles from Llanbedr College, has neither doors nor windows. The sacrament has not been administered for ten years. Service seldom performed at all. Cows and horses walk into the church and out at pleasure.

'No. 10. Llanfihangel Ar Arth, also near Llanbedr.--Here there was once a chapel of ease; the stones of its ruins have now disappeared, though a yew-tree marks the spot; and the baptismal font was lately seen used as a pig-trough. Yet the dissenters have five chapels, and congregations amounting to 1,200.

'No. 11. Llandeilo Abercywyn.--The incumbent is occasionally obliged to ring the church bell himself; but sometimes the congregation amounts to two or three persons.

'No. 12.--In another parish the vicar has been in the Insolvent Court; and was also suspended for three years for immorality, but allowed to return. He has only a congregation of about fifty, whilst the dissenters have four chapels, with congregations of about 1,300.

'No. 13 Llandeilo Fach.--No service here for about ten years. The roof has fallen down for several years; but, fortunately, there is a dissenting chapel, with a congregation of about 300.

'No. 15. Llanddowror.--This parish is a frightful demonstration of the destruction of the Church in Wales by the present system. About eighty years ago this parish was under the pastoral care of a native Welshman, the excellent and eminent Griffith Jones, renowned for his piety, abilities, and qualifications. This church had then 500 communicants, and people came many miles to attend the service. But this church has now no roof to its chancel, of which it has been destitute several years. The churchyard has neither wall nor fence; sheep were seen standing on the church tower some months ago. In one parish the curate has only of late been suspended, of whom the parishioners said he was "so bad the devil would soon be ashamed of him." The vicar had not preached in this parish for ten years, and lives twenty miles off. He has had the care of the parish since 1812, which is now reduced to the above deplorable state, though formerly, when in other hands, it was quoted as the model parish of Wales.'

Such was the aspect of the Church in the diocese of St. David's only twenty years ago; and we have no doubt there were scores of other parishes in the same diocese in little better condition than those specified in the above extracts.

Let us now turn to look at another diocese. In the year 1850 a vigorous effort was made to promote church extension in the diocese of Llandaff. An appeal was issued in the form of a letter from the Archdeacon of Llandaff to the Bishop, stating the facts of the case, which were these. The population of the two Archdeaconries of Llandaff and Monmouth was 173,139. There was church-accommodation for only 17,440. Let our readers specially remark this fact. After having been in possession of the country for three hundred years, the Established Church in that part of Wales did not pretend to have made provision, in the year of grace 1850, for the religious instruction of more than one-tenth of the vast population committed to her care. But, did the people avail themselves of her ministrations even to that extent? The answer is at hand. Among others to whom the appeal for help in building new churches, founded on the above showing, was sent, was Sir Benjamin Hall. Before responding to that appeal, Sir Benjamin, who was intimately conversant with that part of the country, and who had his doubts whether more church-accommodation, scanty as it was, was really needed for the district, instructed competent persons to count the actual numbers who attended the churches and the dissenting chapels in forty of the parishes of the diocese on a given Sunday. He published the result in a pamphlet, in the form of a letter to the Bishop, from which it appeared that, while the sittings provided in the churches were 17,440, the total number of actual attendants at the most numerously-attended service on Sunday, October 13th, 'the weather being particularly fine,' was 7,229; while the number which attended the 227 chapels provided by the Nonconformists, in the same district, amounted, on the same day, to 80,270. 'From the above it appears,' says the writer of the pamphlet, 'that so far from the churches being too small to hold the remnant of Churchmen which the zeal and activity of Dissenters have not wrested from us, there is, at present, room for 9,591 persons in addition to those who now attend the divine service of the Established Church.'

If we turn to one of the North Wales dioceses, that of Bangor, it would seem that even now, notwithstanding the energetic efforts which the present bishop is known to have made to infuse some life into the church, its condition, according to the acknowledgment of its own friends, is sufficiently discouraging. At a meeting held in Bangor last year, the bishop in the chair, a lay churchman said that Anglesey has seventy-nine parishes, fifty-two of which have no parsonages. The seventy-nine parishes are held by forty rectors; two of them possess four livings each, eight of them possess three livings each, and seventeen two each. He said that the desirable thing for Anglesey was the residence of the clergyman among his parishioners. He declared that the church there was now 'empty.' Another of the speakers, Lord Penrhyn, acknowledged that Dissent had prevented Wales from becoming a heathen country. At a clerical conference held in the same city in August, 1868, also under the presidency of the bishop, the Rev. P. C. Ellis, Llanfairfechan, in the course, we are told, of 'a very earnest address,' made these remarks:--'He believed if the Church of Ireland were disestablished it would be a just judgment upon the clergy of that church for their shortcomings, and he was convinced that investigation would show that the clergy of the church in this country had fallen as far short of their duty as their brethren in Ireland. He trembled to think what the report of the state of the Church in Wales would disclose, as he believed its position was worse than that of the Church in Ireland. If the Church in Ireland were to go down, the Church in Wales must surely follow.'

With regard to the number of persons still attached to the Church in Wales, there is great discrepancy of opinion. Without pronouncing dogmatically on the subject, we propose to furnish our readers with certain data, which may assist them in drawing their own conclusions. So far as we know, the first, and we believe the most careful attempt that was ever made to procure a return of the ecclesiastical statistics of Wales, was in 1846, by Mr. Hugh Owen, Honorary Secretary of the Cambrian Educational Society, a gentleman to whom the Principality is indebted for many valuable services. What provoked that inquiry was this. About that time the National Society was making a strenuous effort to cover Wales with day-schools, wherein, according to the fundamental regulations of that Society, 'the children were to be instructed in the Holy Scriptures, and the liturgy and catechism of the Church of England, such instruction to be subject to the superintendence of the parochial clergyman;' 'the children to be assembled for the purpose of attending service in the parish church;' 'the masters and mistresses to be members of the Church of England,' &c. A special appeal was issued on behalf of Wales by Archdeacon Sinclair, with a view 'to raise a large fund' to establish schools on the above principles. In this appeal, the suggestion 'to adopt a broad basis in which all sects could unite,' was sternly rejected. No system 'from which the characteristic doctrines of the Church of England were expunged' could be tolerated for an instant. To show how utterly unsuited to the country schools of this description must prove to be, the inquiry of which we speak was instituted. Having obtained, through means of the relieving officers, the names and addresses of trustworthy persons in about three-fourths of the parishes in Wales, Mr. Owen addressed a circular to each of those persons, requesting a return of--1. The name of every place of worship in his district. 2. The name of the denomination to which it belonged. 3. The exact number of the congregation at each place of worship on the first Sunday after the receipt of the circular, in the morning, afternoon, and evening. 4. The exact number attending the Sunday-school at each place, morning and afternoon.[166] Returns were received from 392 parishes, thirty of which were in Anglesey, fifty-nine in Carnarvonshire, fifty-three in Denbighshire, seventeen in Flintshire, twenty-three in Merionethshire, twenty-eight in Montgomeryshire, twenty-seven in Breconshire, fifty-four in Cardiganshire, forty in Carmarthenshire, eighteen in Glamorganshire, forty-three in Pembrokeshire, and ten in Radnorshire. The population of these 392 parishes amounted to 431,000. As the total population of Wales, not including Monmouthshire, was then only 911,603, that of the returned parishes contained nearly one-half of the whole population of the country. The result is thus summarized in a pamphlet published soon after:--

'From the returns it appeared that the number attending the morning services of dissenters were 79,694, the morning service of the church, only 18,128, being more than four dissenters to one churchman; the afternoon services of dissenters were attended by 63,379, those of the church by 5,710, or about seven dissenters to one churchman. The evening services of the church were attended by 9,889, and those of dissenters by 128,216, or twenty-two dissenters to one churchman. The average attendance on the Sunday was--

Churchmen 11,242 Dissenters 90,415 ------- Total average attendance 101,657

Hence the average attendance of dissenters as compared with churchmen was as eight to one.

'The actual morning attendance at dissenting Sunday-Schools was 40,641, at the church schools 3,396, or in the proportion of twelve to one. In the afternoon, the dissenters' schools were attended by 57,243, the church schools by 6,002, or more than nine to one, giving an average proportion of eleven to one in favour of dissenting schools.'

It may be objected that as there were probably many churches in which only one service was held, the deduction, from the average of three services, may be unfair. Well, let it be noticed that the maximum number attending the churches is in the morning, when it amounts to 18,128; and that the maximum number attending the dissenting chapels is in the evening, when it amounts to 128,216; hence the ratio of the maximum attendance at dissenting chapels (evening service) to the maximum attendance at the churches (morning service) is seven to one. But leaving out of account for the moment the relative proportions of Church and Dissent, as indicated by these returns, what do they tell us of the absolute number of persons attached to the Church, as compared with the population? Instead of taking the average attendance at three services, we will, as before, take the number present at the most numerously attended, namely, the morning service; and if we add to that number one-fourth to represent absentees, we shall have a total of 22,660 souls. This, in a population of 431,000, would amount to rather more than one in nineteen of church-goers.

But let us now turn to the official census of 1851. We have not the slightest wish to impeach the general accuracy of the facts and figures given in Mr. Horace Mann's masterly report. But the condition of Wales is very peculiar, and the general rules laid down by that eminent statistician for classifying and formulating the immense mass of figures with which he had to deal, while fair enough, no doubt, to the normal state of society in England, may not have been equally applicable to a country in so exceptional a state as Wales.

That a serious error has crept in somewhere into the returns, as respects the Principality, is obvious from this one fact. The number of sittings provided by the Church of England is stated to be 301,807, and the number of the worshipping population of the same church on the 31st of March, 1851, is stated to be 138,719. Now Mr. Mann shows that the proportion per cent. of attendants to sittings in the Established Church, throughout all England and Wales, is only thirty-three; whereas by the above showing, the proportion of attendants to sittings in Wales alone is 40 per cent. We venture to say, that no man competently acquainted with Wales, knowing, as every such man must know, the miserably meagre attendance at hundreds of churches in that country, would for an instant believe that the churches are occupied in the proportion of 40 per cent. of attendants to sittings. Let us, however, take the figures given to us in the census. The population of Wales, including Monmouthshire, in 1851, was 1,188,914. The total number of places of worship was 4,006, which was distributed thus:

PLACES OF WORSHIP.

Of the places of worship-- The Established Church furnished 1,180 Nonconformists 2,826 ----- 4,006

SITTINGS.

Of the sittings (including estimates for defective return)-- Established Church furnished 301,897, or 30 per cent. Nonconformists 692,239, or 70 per cent.

It appears thus, that the Church had provided sittings for only 25 per cent. of the population, while the Nonconformists had provided sittings for nearly 59 per cent.

But how about attendance? According to Table B. of the Census of Religious Worship, the greatest number by very far of attendants at the services of the Established Church on the Census Sunday was in the morning. The number was 100,953. If we add one-fourth to this number for the absentees, we have 126,191, which represents 10·6 per cent., not quite one in nine of the population.

But these facts, sufficiently remarkable as they are in themselves, give really but an imperfect impression of the real magnitude of the anomaly which exists in Wales. An Established Church is presumably a national Church, and rests its claim to being established on the ground of its being national. Above all, it ought to be par excellence the poor man's Church, as some of the friends of the English Establishment are wont to allege, with what truth we pause not now to inquire, that theirs is. But in Wales the Church is not only not national, but it is anti-national; and the whole policy of its rulers for at least a hundred and fifty years has been inspired by a prejudice as stupid as it was mean against, the Welsh nationality and language. At present, of the small remnant of the population which still remains within its pale, by far the larger part are either English immigrants into Wales, or that portion of the Welsh people which have become Anglified in their feelings and tastes; and instead of being the poor man's Church, that of Wales is emphatically and almost exclusively the rich man's Church. There are scores, we might safely say hundreds of churches, in which, if the clergyman's family and the squire's family, and their few dependents and parasites were removed, there would be absolutely no congregation at all.

Mr. Gladstone lamented, as members of the Welsh Church also sometimes profess to lament, the want of accurate and trustworthy information as to the real facts of the case as regards the several religious opinions in Wales. But whose fault is that? There would be no difficulty whatever, in a small country like Wales, in obtaining perfectly accurate information as to the number of adherents to the church, if that body were to follow the example of the principal Nonconformist denominations in the Principality, who collect and publish periodically statistical returns of the members of their churches, and the attendants at public worship. But the clergy of the establishment, clinging tenaciously in the face of notorious facts to the fond fancy that theirs is the national church, however small a fragment of the nation really belongs to it, decline to give us the number either of their communicants or of those who habitually frequent their churches. We are driven therefore to look for such incidental indications of the real state of the case as may come within our reach. Some of these, however, are very significant. In the National Society's report for 1866-7 there is a return given of the number of persons attending Church Sunday Schools in Wales. They amounted to 49,358, or 4 per cent. of the population. The number found in Dissenting Sunday Schools, according to the printed year books of the various denominations on the same year, was 351,128, or 29 per cent. of the population, thus showing the Church Sunday scholars to be one-eighth of the entire number. These returns are all the more valuable, because in Wales it is not the children merely that attend the Sunday schools, but a very large proportion of the adult population also.

Very striking revelations have been made, likewise, in connection with Day Schools in Wales, tending to throw much light on the actual and comparative strength of the church. When the committee of Council on Education began to make grants for the erection of schools, there was a great rush of applicants from the friends of the Established Church in Wales. They had many advantages in their favour for undertaking the work of establishing Day Schools. They had nearly the whole land and a great proportion of the wealth of the country in their possession. As they drew the means for the support of their clergy, the fabrics of the church, and public worship--which the Dissenters had to provide out of their own pockets--from the national endowments, they had all their resources at liberty to devote to the work of education. The administrators of the national fund were their partial friends, and dispensed it with a lavish profusion, with little or no inquiry into the fitness of those who applied, to direct and control the education of such a population as that of Wales. The National Society, as already shown, made an appeal, which was liberally responded to, for a special fund in which the co-operation of England was solicited, to promote 'the education of our fellow-countrymen throughout Wales in the principles of our common church.' Our friends of the Establishment, moreover, were restrained by no scruple whatever from receiving public money to any extent for teaching their own peculiar tenets in day schools, while the Dissenters conscientiously refused the proffered grants of Government aid for religious instruction. This sudden access of educational zeal sprang avowedly in great part from proselyting motives. The Bishop of St. David's, in one of his early charges, adverting to the peculiar condition of the Principality, confessed that the existing generation was hopelessly alienated from the church, but that the next could and must be recovered by attending to the education of the young. The result of this effort was that State-aided Church schools sprang up in all the larger towns and villages, and in many remote hamlets, and that often in places where there were not half-a-dozen church children.[167] In these schools the principles of the National Society were rigidly enforced. All the children were taught the Church catechism, and obliged to attend church on Sundays. But State-aided schools were liable to inspection, and the inspectors had to present their reports to the Committee of Council, and these were laid before Parliament and the public. It was not possible, therefore, in reporting on the state of education in Wales, wholly to conceal the fact, that an enormous majority of the people held religious views different from those held by the class who in many places had undertaken to direct their education. This has often come out in the reports of even Church of England Inspectors. Thus the Rev. Longueville Jones, who was inspector of Church schools in Wales in 1854, says:--'The number of children in Welsh schools whose parents belong to the Church is so very small, that it requires great experience and delicacy of feeling to treat their young minds as they should be.'[168] As an illustration of the difficulty with which this gentleman had to contend, it is only necessary to refer to the statistics he gives of one school under his inspection, in which out of 107 children, only five were of parents belonging to the Church, whilst in the following year the same school contained 144 children, of whom two only were of church-going parents. To come down to a later period in the report of the Rev. S. Pryce, Inspector of Church of England Schools for Mid-Wales, for 1868, we find the following admission:--'The number of children attending the Welsh country schools I visit, is great beyond all proportion when compared with the number of persons attending church.'[169]

Among the inspectors of British schools in Wales was and is Mr. J. Bowstead. We believe that Mr. Bowstead is himself a churchman. But he is a liberal and candid churchman. When, therefore, in the discharge of his office, he began to visit the country, some eighteen or twenty years ago, he was forcibly struck with the singular anomaly he found to exist, of a large number of Church schools in some cases liberally subsidized from the public funds, and in others supported by deductions from workmen's wages, planted among a population of Dissenters, who felt the strongest repugnance to much of the religious teaching forced on their children in such schools. He had the courage in his reports to expose this injustice, for which he has been ever since the bête noire of the Welsh bishops and clergy, who often assail him with great acrimony and conspicuous unfairness. But on the other hand, he has the satisfaction of knowing that he has won the enthusiastic gratitude of a whole nation, who owe to him, in a main degree, the exposure of a flagrant wrong from which they had been long suffering, with little hope of deliverance. Well, Mr. Bowstead, after extensive and careful inquiry, in order to show the aggravated character of the anomaly of which he complained, ventured to say that nine-tenths of the common people in Wales were Nonconformists. A writer in the April number of the Quarterly Review has assailed him very angrily, and has accused him of 'asserting without a shadow of proof that nine-tenths of the Welsh people are Nonconformists.' In a pamphlet issued for private circulation, Mr. Bowstead has with just severity first rebuked his assailant for perverting his words, and then shown how little foundation there is for the charge of his having asserted without 'a shadow of proof,' what alone he did assert, that nine-tenths of the common people of Wales, of such people as use elementary schools, are Nonconformists. Now for the proof of this allegation. When Sir John Pakington's committee was sitting in 1865-6, Mr. Bowstead was one of the witnesses summoned to give evidence. He had been asked to procure the best information he could, as to the comparative numbers of children of church people and children of Dissenters in the schools he visited. He had no difficulty in getting at this from the school register, because the name of the Sunday school which each child attends is entered in a column provided for the purpose, a very satisfactory index of the denomination to which its parents belong. And what was the result? He received returns from thirty schools, 'which were the only elementary schools in their respective localities. These thirty schools had an aggregate of 6,799 children under instruction, and of these 756 were returned as belonging to the Church. The children of parents attached to the Church formed, therefore, about 11 per cent. of the whole, and the children of Nonconformists constituted the remaining 89 per cent. But Mr. Bowstead supplies us with more recent evidence, which we give in his own words:--

'I have not on this occasion attempted to obtain returns from so wide an area as in 1866; but I have secured very complete and reliable returns, upon a considerable scale, from a locality which embraces some 20,000 inhabitants, all of whom are brought together by the industrial operations of one large Company; and all of whose children, so far as they belong to the working classes, receive their education in schools promoted by that Company. The locality is Dowlais, which in the matter of education is the Prussia of South Wales. It has an admirable system of schools, embracing not only unsectarian Protestant schools for the bulk of the community, but also Roman Catholic schools for the Irish. Nearly one-sixth of the whole population may be found on the registers of these schools at any moment, and I should think there is scarcely a child in the place that does not receive some amount of schooling, whilst those of them who stay long enough at school secure a very thorough elementary English education, together with some instruction in the French language and in drawing. I know of no place where the schools reproduce so complete a picture of the population around them, or where the free play of all the social forces presents so true a type of the characteristic features of the working men of the district.'

Mr. Bowstead then subjoins a table showing the number of children belonging to each denomination, in attendance at the Dowlais schools: out of a total of 2,933, those belonging to the Established Church are 266. 'The Church children therefore would be almost 7·7 per cent., or one-thirteenth of the whole, and the Nonconformists would claim the remaining twelve-thirteenths. This gives a larger proportion to the Nonconformists than any former return.' Accompanying this return there is a letter from Mr. G. T. Clark, the manager of the Dowlais works, containing two or three sentences which are of great significance and value. In sending the tabular statement just referred to, Mr. Clark remarks:--'The proportion of the several sects may, I think, be taken as typical of the manufacturing population of South Wales and Monmouthshire.' We must quote two or three other sentences from Mr. Clark's letter:--

'I see a great deal is said about the disposition of the Welsh Dissenters to allow their children to attend Church schools. We have both Church and neutral schools in this district, and I believe the Church schools of my friend and neighbour the Rector of Gelligaer to be as good as any semi-rural Schools in Wales, and they are largely attended by the children of Dissenters. But this is not from love of the Church, but because they desire education, and the district has no other schools. The Welsh, in this respect, like the Scotch, have a craving to get on, and they will make a sacrifice to educate their children; and if the only accessible school be a Church school, to it they will apply. They trust and safely trust to the domestic example, and to the Sunday teaching in the chapel, and chapel school, to keep the children in the special faith of their parents.... Those who say that the South Wales manufacturing population have a regard for the Church of England speak in utter ignorance of the matter. Their dislike to the Church, as an establishment, is very strong, and is yearly becoming stronger.'

It would be difficult to find a more competent and trustworthy witness. Mr. Clark is himself an attached member of the Church of England. He is a gentleman of rare intelligence, who has for many years been at the head of one of the largest and best conducted of the great iron works of South Wales. His knowledge of the population of the whole district is extensive and accurate. His testimony therefore as to the comparative number of Churchmen and Dissenters, and the feelings of the Nonconformists towards the Establishment, must be held to be unimpeachable.

But what is the comparative progress in accommodation for worship made by the Church and the Nonconformists since the Census of 1851? We have the materials for an approximate estimate. The Bishop of Llandaff, in his last charge, delivered in August, 1869, states that since 1849, the number of new churches erected in his diocese is thirty-nine, not quite two churches in the year; and the number of churches rebuilt on the same site, but whether enlarged is not stated, is thirty-six, making a total of seventy-five. Against this we have to place the following return, furnished to us in detail, but of which we can here give only a summary, of what has been done in the same diocese by three Nonconformist bodies since 1850:--

Number of new chapels built by the Independents 68 Number of ditto rebuilt and enlarged 46 -- 114 Number of new chapels built by the Baptists 66 Number of ditto rebuilt and enlarged 39 -- 105 Number of new chapels built by Calvinistic Methodists 52 Number of ditto rebuilt and enlarged 42 -- 94 --- 313

Let it be observed that this showing includes only the three principal Nonconformist denominations, as we have failed to procure returns of the different bodies of Wesleyan Methodists and other minor sects, which would make undoubtedly a considerable addition to the total increase of dissenting accommodation. And yet how does the comparison stand even with such incomplete elements as we possess? We find that the Nonconformists have built 186 new places of worship against thirty-nine built by the Church, and have rebuilt and enlarged 127 more against thirty-six rebuilt by the Church.

With regard to the whole of Wales, our information as respects what the Church has done during the last twenty years, is not so perfect as we could wish. The number of new churches built in the four dioceses appears, as nearly as we can calculate from the data within our reach, to be about 110. But there is more difficulty in getting, at those rebuilt and enlarged, as in one of the returns (that of St. Asaph) we find churches 'restored' and 'improved'--words implying merely repairs of existing fabrics without any additional accommodation--mixed up with those which have been 'rebuilt and enlarged.' We have the precise number rebuilt, and we are willing to presume somewhat enlarged, in Llandaff, which is thirty-six, and in Bangor, which is thirty-one. We think it would be a liberal allowance from the statistical report before us to assign thirty-five 'enlarged' churches to St. Asaph, and judging by the number of new churches built in St. David's, we presume that thirty 'enlarged' churches would cover all that has been done in that diocese, making a total rebuilt and enlarged of 132. Let us now turn to the Nonconformists. The following are facts on the substantial accuracy of which our readers may rely. Since 1850, the Calvinistic Methodists have built 321 new chapels, and have rebuilt and enlarged 435 more, providing additional accommodation in all for 123,881 worshippers, at a cost of £366,000. The Independents, during the same period, have built 118 new chapels, and have rebuilt and enlarged 200 more, furnishing additional accommodation for 130,000, at a cost of £294,000. The Baptists have built 142 new chapels, and rebuilt and enlarged ninety-nine more, furnishing additional accommodation for 81,800, at a cost of £163,000. Thus, these three denominations alone have in twenty years built 581 new chapels, and rebuilt and enlarged 734 more, providing accommodation for 308,681 persons, at a cost of £823,000.

But it must be further observed, that it is not merely in the matter of religious instruction that the Nonconformists have become almost exclusively the leaders of the Welsh people. As respects literature and science, and all important social and political movements, it is the same. The literature of Wales, and not its religious literature merely, is almost wholly Nonconformist. There are about thirty periodicals, quarterly, monthly, and weekly, at present published in the Welsh language. Of these all but three are owned and edited by Dissenters. There are nine commentaries on the whole Bible, and nine besides on the New Testament alone, some original and some translated from English, and only two of these were done by Churchmen, and even they were Dissenters when they began their work. There are eight Biblical and Theological Dictionaries, and as many bodies of divinity or systems of theology, and no Churchman, we believe, has had a hand in the production of any one of them. There is a History of the World, a History of Great Britain, a History of Christianity, a History of the Church, a History of the Welsh Nation, a History of Religion in Wales, all by Dissenters, besides elaborate denominational Histories of the Calvinistic Methodists, the Independents, the Baptists, &c. Indeed, all the ecclesiastical histories in the language are Nonconformist, and all the general histories except the History of Wales by the Rev. Thomas Price, and a small work called the 'Mirror of the Principal Ages.' There is a valuable work illustrated by many excellent maps and diagrams, entitled 'The History of Heaven and Earth,' treating of geography and astronomy, by the Rev. J. T. Jones, of Aberdare, formerly a Nonconformist minister. There is another large geographical dictionary in course of publication by a dissenting minister. There are two copious Biographical Dictionaries edited and principally written by Dissenters. There is now, and has been for several years, in course of publication an Encyclopædia in the Welsh language (Encyclopædia Cambrensis), dealing as such works do with the entire circle of human knowledge. It was described by the late Archdeacon Williams, who had seen the earlier volumes, as 'a work of great promise, as sound in doctrine as it is unsectarian in principle.' It is studiously free from denominational taint, and was intended to be a great national undertaking, the contributors being indiscriminately selected from the ablest writers of all denominations, the combined learning and talent of Wales being thus engaged in its preparation. The enterprising publisher at the outset addressed a letter to all those among his countrymen of whatever church or creed who had distinguished themselves in any way by their literary acquirements and productions, inviting their co-operation. We have now before us a list of the contributors amounting to ninety names, and out of these ninety, there are certainly not more than nine churchmen.

The English public has of late years become partially acquainted with a remarkable institution existing in Wales, which has come down from very ancient times, called Yr Eisteddfod, or the Session, meaning in its primitive signification the Session of the Bards. Its object is to encourage the cultivation of literature, poetry and music. The English press has tried to throw great ridicule on this institution, as the English press is wont to do, upon all institutions that are not English. And yet surely, as the Bishop of St. David's has said, 'it is a most remarkable feature in the history of any people, and such as could be said of no other than the Welsh, that they have centred their national recreation in literature and musical competitions.' Prizes ranging from £1 to £100 are offered for the best compositions in poetry, prose, and music. The highest honour bestowed by the Eisteddfod is the Bardic chair, and the productions entitling the successful candidates to this distinction are supposed to possess rare merit. There are now living nine chaired bards, of whom one is a clergyman, seven are Nonconformist ministers, and one a Nonconformist layman. In musical compositions, the proportion would be about the same. And certainly the Welsh clergy of the present day have not, any more than their predecessors, distinguished themselves as authors. A catalogue of Welsh books published within the last twenty years, would show a very beggarly 'account' standing to the credit of the official instructors of the Welsh people.

Such are the past history and the present condition of the Established Church in Wales. Surely no legislature with any sense of justice can long refuse to deal with so anomalous an institution as that we have described; a Church which has wholly failed, and is still failing, to accomplish the only object for which it pretends to exist, from which--and that entirely owing to its own criminal neglect--the great body of the people are hopelessly alienated, and which has no vital relation with the religions, political, social, or literary life of the nation. And it is not merely a theoretical anomaly. It is an intolerable practical grievance, and is becoming more and more so every day. For its friends, numbering as they do nearly all the landowners and wealthy classes, galvanized, of late years, into a sort of spasmodic zeal, which is far more political than religious, are making frantic efforts to regain for their Church the ascendancy it has so righteously lost, by a very unscrupulous use of their wealth, their social position, and their control over the land. The advocates of the Church, especially in the English press, are trying to wreak their vengeance on a nation of Dissenters, by traducing the character of the people, and ridiculing their language, their literature, and their religious institutions; and this they are not deterred from doing by their utter ignorance of all three. Some of the Welsh clergy, also, exasperated by seeing their pretensions contemned, and their ministrations forsaken, are propagating the most monstrous calumnies against their successful rivals, the Dissenting ministers. One Conservative journal in London has especially distinguished itself by throwing its columns open to these anonymous slanderers. Here are some of the flowers of speech that have been plentifully scattered in its pages on the Welsh Nonconformists. 'The Welsh language is made the instrument of evil by preachers and other supporters of anarchy and plunder.' 'The people are actively taught to commit arson and murder; they are regularly drilled into Fenianism.' 'Dissenting ministers are the curse of Wales; there is scarcely a sermon or lecture they deliver that is not full of sedition.'

And yet the country whose population is thus systematically trained to sedition and murder, is more free from serious crime than any part of the United Kingdom; so free, indeed, that in many of the counties the annual visit of her Majesty's judges is almost a work of supererogation. Take as an example the county of Cardigan, which was the scene of the most extensive and cruel political persecutions after the last election, where about sixty tenants were evicted from their holdings, some of them under circumstances of a singularly exasperating character. And yet at the Assizes, that were held immediately after, there was not a single prisoner to be tried. Mr. Justice Hannen, in charging the grand jury, said 'that a perfectly clear calendar was a circumstance he had never before met with since he had been on the bench, and he understood from his brother judges that only in the Principality of Wales was such a thing known, and that there it was frequent. Whether it was attributable to race or to the influence of religious teaching he could not say, but he felt deeply interested in the matter, and whatever might be the cause, there was the indisputable fact, one of which the county of Cardigan might well be proud.'

These insane efforts to drive or to drag the people back into the Church by coercion and calumny, produce, of course, precisely the opposite effect. Indeed the Conservatives, in their treatment of Wales, are triumphantly vindicating their right to the title bestowed upon them by Mr. Stuart Mill, as 'the stupid party.' Unhappily, however, they do succeed in embittering the heart of the people, and in introducing alienation and anger into their relations with the classes who are thus tempted to tamper with their religious and political rights. And all this is owing to the existence of an Established Church.

ART. VII. (1.)--The Greek New Testament, edited from Ancient Authorities, with the Latin Version of Jerome from the Codex Amiatinus. By S. P. TREGELLES, LL.D. Matthew to Acts--Catholic Epistles--Romans to Philemon. S. Bagster and Sons.

(2.) Fragmenta Evangelica quæ ex antiqua recensione versionis Syriacæ Novi Testamenti a Gulielmo Curetono vulgata sunt Græce reddita textuique Syriaco editionis Schaafianæ et Græco Scholzianæ fideliter collata. Pars Prima. J. R. CROWFOOT, S.T.B. Williams and Norgate.

It is difficult to estimate our unpaid obligations to the students and scholars who have sacrificed their life to furnish us with the common-places of our knowledge. The elaborate and prolonged effort, the perseverance, ingenuity, and scientific skill often concealed in the foundations of a great building or in the underways of a great city, are no inapt illustration of the lifelong labours of those students and votaries of literature who have placed in our hands authentic and accurate copies of the chefs-d'oeuvre of ancient thinkers. The learned, patient, and devout men to whom we are indebted for our present careful approximations to the text of the New Testament, have undergone a species of toil which it is very difficult for those scholars even to appreciate, who have never made the attempt to decipher a single MS. or to gather around them the abundant and often conflicting evidence on which the judgment of the critic really turns. Whatever be the ultimate currency or acceptance of the text which Dr. Tregelles has offered to the world as the result of his life-long effort, and granting that some of the disadvantages under which he has suffered have left ineffaceable marks on the greater part of the work, and that his main principles may still be under judicature, yet we readily endorse the strong language of Bishop Ellicott: 'The edition of Tregelles will last to the very end of time as a noble monument of faithful, enduring, and accurate labour in the cause of truth; it will always be referred to as an uniquely trustworthy collection of assorted critical materials of the greatest value, and as such it will probably never be superseded.'[170] The Bishop does not regard Dr. Tregelles' text as the final one, but does not hesitate to speak of it as far better than Tischendorf's, and as furnishing material which no subsequent editor can afford to ignore. With the exception of the text of the Apocalypse and of the appendices rendered necessary by the progress of textual criticism since the earlier portions of the work were published, this long-expected work is now placed in our hands. The exception to which we have referred is, we profoundly regret to say, occasioned by the serious indisposition of the learned, laborious, and devout editor. The regret is to some extent alleviated from a literary point of view by the circumstance that one of the first contributions to Biblical science made by this conscientious and accurate scholar was published in 1844, and entitled 'The Book of Revelation in Greek, edited from Ancient Authorities, with a new English Version and various Readings, by Samuel P. Tregelles.' There is this difference, however, between the evidence alleged by Dr. Tregelles for the text of the Revelation and that which he has pursued throughout the elaborate work now before us, that in the former he was either content or only able at that time to give the evidence of the few Uncial MSS. and early versions, then known to contain the Apocalypse, with such confirmation as they received from a large number of the Cursive MSS. Although his object was to approximate as nearly as possible to the most ancient text, his apparatus criticus had not then reached the proportions it has subsequently assumed, and he did not even attempt to marshal the evidence of patristic quotations, or to give the arguments pro and contra any reading that he deliberately adopted. The Codex Sinaiticus had not then been rescued from the Convent of St. Catherine by the enterprising Dr. Tischendorf, and the system of careful notation which is adopted in the magnum opus now before us, had not been elaborated. Since 1844, moreover, the Rev. Bradley Alford has published a collation of the celebrated Cursive MS. 38, Dr. Delitzch has discovered the MS. used by Erasmus, and a careful collation is promised of the Codex Basiliensis, which Dr. Tregelles proposes to call Q, instead of adopting the old and confusing symbol B, which has led some to identify it with the Codex Vaticanus. The introduction to the interesting volume on the text of the Book of Revelation was expanded in 1854 into a goodly octavo entitled 'An Account of the printed text of the Greek New Testament, with remarks on its revision upon critical principles, together with a collation of the critical texts of Griesbach, Scholz, Lachmann, and Tischendorf with that in common use.' We know no work on biblical criticism more charged with well-digested information, and none which reveals a more extensive literary enterprise, than that which is here recorded. Dr. Tregelles tells us in the preface to his Greek Testament, that this work contains a detailed exposition of the principles he holds and the studies in which he has been engaged, and as his editors earnestly request that it be referred to in explanation of the principle adopted by Dr. Tregelles, it is almost incumbent upon us to remind our readers of its contents and spirit. In the appendix to section 13, occurs a brief and modest sketch of the extensive and continuous labours of this great student of the New Testament text. It appears that he commenced his research simply for his own satisfaction. The text of Dr. Scholz, based so largely on the consensus of later MSS. but revealing the small group of Alexandrian authorities and most ancient witnesses in opposition to the text adopted by him, first called Dr. Tregelles to a consideration of the fact that these most ancient but rejected testimonies were curiously confirmed by the older versions. He was thus led to conceive of the creation of a text entirely based on the authority of the most ancient copies. He did not even know that Lachmann in 1838 had already made his celebrated though imperfect attempt to produce the text of the first four centuries in entire or professed independence of the later authorities and of the received text. When the Codex Amiatinus of Jerome's Latin Version was collated and published by Fleck in 1840, Tregelles found it confirm, in opposition to the Clementine Vulgate, the oldest Greek readings. In preparing his work on the text of the Revelation, he found it necessary to collate the Uncial MSS. with his own hand. In 1845 he collated the Codex Augiensis (in Trinity Coll. Camb.). Though he visited Rome for the purpose of collating the celebrated Codex Vaticanus he was prevented from copying unless it were surreptitiously on his thumb-nails, a single reading. We formerly gave to our readers[171] a full account of the various imperfect collations made by Birch, Bartolocci, and Cardinal Mai, and also of the edition which has recently been published under the auspices of Dr. Tischendorf. In the greater part of Dr. Tregelles' critical labours he has been compelled to trust to the faulty and otherwise divergent collations which preceded Dr. Tischendorf's edition; but while he was deprived of the personal advantage of investigating Codex B for himself, he did collate at Rome, with his own hand, the Codex Passonei, and at Florence the Codex Amiatinus of Jerome's Latin; and at Modena, Venice, Munich, and Basle, other Uncial MSS. of considerable portions of the New Testament. Many of these were used by Tischendorf in his second Leipsic edition of the Greek Testament.

Dr. Tregelles became acquainted in 1849 with the remarkable Syriac fragment which Dr. Cureton found among the MSS. brought from the Nitrian monasteries and deposited in the British Museum. This mutilated fragment contains portions of the four Gospels--Matt. i.-viii. 22; x. 31-xxiii. 25; Mark xvi. 17-20; John i. 1-42; iii. 6-vii. 37; xiv. 11-29; Luke ii. 48-iii. 16; vii. 33-xv. 21; xvii. 24-xxiv. 44; but in the opinion of the best Syriac scholars, it is older than the Peshito, and would seem to have been collated with the Greek by the translator of the Greek Testament into Syriac (Peshito). Dr. Cureton supposed that it represents a first translation from the original Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, but Dr. Davidson has we think conclusively proved that it is a translation from the Greek. Dr. Cureton conjectured that sundry curious blunders or deviations from the canonical Matthew are due to the mistakes made by the translator of the Hebrew into Syriac. These conjectures are ingenious but perfectly gratuitous. Dr. Davidson has shown that in a variety of places the Curetonian Syriac (as it is called) differs from the early Greek text by the obvious blunder between two Greek words of similar appearance. We have been rather explicit on the matter of this valuable witness to a very early text, not only because Dr. Tregelles and others have made constant reference to it, but because the second work which we have placed at the head of this article is a translation into Greek of the first part of these precious fragments, and is, moreover, a collation of every reading with Scholz's text, and with Schaaf's edition of the Peshito. This critical effort of Mr. Crowfoot will be of real service to the student who is not familiar with Syriac, and who wishes to see for himself the singular deviations of this text from the Textus Receptus. Take e.g. the additions made to the text of Matthew in chap. xx. 28, where a passage resembling one in Luke vii. is introduced. The Cur. Syriac here is sustained by the Codex D. Very frequently, however, it corresponds in its omissions with the most ancient MSS. and with the old Latin, as in Matt. xx. 22, 23. It is profoundly interesting, moreover, in that it retains of Mark's Gospel only a portion of the very closing passage, which is not to be found in Codex B. or in א. Partly in consequence of this testimony Dr. Tregelles leaves the passage as an authentic appendix to the text of the Gospel of St. Mark. We see that Mr. Crowfoot and Dr. Tregelles sometimes differ, as we might expect them to do, as to the Greek equivalent which they suppose most likely to have been the exemplar of the Syriac, but they do not seriously differ as to the testimony it bears to a particular reading. In Matthew xi. 23, the Textus Rec. reads καὶ σὺ Καπερναοὺμ ἡ ἕως τοῦ οὐρανοῦ ὑψωθεῖσα, κ.τ.λ. Mr. Crowfoot gives in place of ἡ, οὐχ. Dr. Tregelles on the authority of B, C, D, the Vulgate a, b, c, and Syr. Cur., gives μὴ, and makes the clause interrogative.

But to proceed with Dr. Tregelles' labours. The various collations made by him need not be exhaustively enumerated, though special attention should be called to the extraordinary effort and patience which was required by him to form an accurate estimate of the readings of the Codex Colbertinus, called 33 in the Gospels, and 13 in the Acts and Catholic Epistles. The leaves of the vellum have been in places sodden with damp and stuck together. The consequence was that when separated, 'the ink adhered to the opposite page rather than to its own, so that in many leaves the MS. could only be read by observing how the ink had set-off, and thus reading the Greek words backwards.' At Paris, Leipsic, Berlin, Dresden and Wolfenbüttel, Dr. Tregelles continued his patient research, and came to such discoveries as that the Codex Sangallensis (Δ of the Gospels), and Codex Boernerianus (G of St. Paul's Epistles) were the severed portions of the same book. At Dublin, the difficult palimpsest fragment (Z) was deciphered after submitting the vellum to a chemical process, and Tregelles was able to restore the portions which had been left blank in the edition of this fragment published by Dr. Barrett.

Special reference may be made to the Codex, called Zacynthius and designated [Ξ], the property of the British and Foreign Bible Society. This is almost an illegible parchment palimpsest, containing considerable portions of Luke's Gospel. The readings of this old lectionary have been carefully noted by Tregelles and are cited throughout his text of the Gospel of Luke. The Codex Leicestrensis, the property of the Town Council of Leicester, has been also carefully collated by our author, as well as by Mr. Scrivener. It is cited as 69 in the Gospels, 31 Acts, and by other numbers in remaining portions of the New Testament.

Dr. Tregelles has not paid much attention to the mass of cursive MSS. It is not fair to accuse him of utterly neglecting them, when he has gone through the laborious work of collating specimens of cursive MSS. in each of the divisions of his subject. He has, however, placed far more confidence in another class of authority and of evidence. The most ancient versions have been thoroughly noted by him in their several codices. The old Latin is carefully studied throughout; the Codex Amiatinus of Jerome's Latin is published in the volume before us, with all the deviations from it in the Clementine Vulgate. The Peshito and Harcleian Syriac versions, the Cureton fragments, the Jerusalem Lectionary, the Memphitic and Thebaic (sometimes called the Coptic and Sahidic) versions, the Ethiopic and the Gothic, are used throughout this edition of the Greek Testament. A considerable number of uncial MSS., which have been published in facsimile or in a printed text, Dr. Tregelles has copied with his own hand, and all the rest of the uncial MSS. he appears to have also collated with his own hand. Having gone through this extraordinary labour, he has proceeded to give the text of the New Testament on the authority of the oldest MSS. and versions, and with the aid of the earliest citations, so as to present the text of the fourth century. He does not hesitate to deviate from these ancient testimonies, when they agree in transcriptural error; and he confers this great advantage on the student, that he states in every case the authorities on both sides with reference to any disputed reading.

Now there has often been expressed on the part of the advocates of the cursive MSS. and the Constantinopolitan group of MSS. and of the later uncial MSS., the conviction that their consensus ought to outweigh the strong and clearly expressed testimony of the ancient MSS. on the plausible supposition that the existing later MS. may be the copies of an older text than that of any existing MS. whatever. Now if Dr. Tregelles or Dean Alford or Dr. Tischendorf had been mere slaves of the few uncial MSS. of great antiquity which are extant, and had no further or corroborative testimony to add in favour of the readings, or the additions and omissions they have affirmed, there would be much justice in the protest sometimes raised; but neither of them can justly be charged with this, and Dr. Tregelles must certainly be acquitted of such prejudice. He and Dean Alford do indisputably and notoriously differ in certain cases where subjective reasons and considerations of the exercise of personal discretion must assume great importance; and in some of these doubtful and difficult cases Tregelles has been more influenced by diplomatic considerations, and has more readily yielded to authority, than Dean Alford; but Dr. Tregelles has stated very acutely and powerfully his reasons for trusting the ancient MSS., even in these difficult readings. Let the following phenomena to which he is able, in most cases, to add the unexceptionable evidence of his own personal observation and collation, be considered. (a) The uncial MSS. are now known and have been at length collated with such care that we may be certain of their testimony. (b) The palimpsests which have been recently found and deciphered confirm the readings of the oldest codices. (c) The great discovery of the Sinaitic Codex throws in its testimony against the bulk of the cursive MSS. (d) The Curetonian Syriac of the Gospels agrees with the oldest MSS. (e) Certain cursive MSS. (such as Codex Colbertinus of the 12th century) agree with the ancient text rather than with the bulk of the cursives, thus providing a class of exception which proves the rule. (f) There is agreement of the ancient versions with this older text; and (g) not infrequently there is the express testimony of early patristic writers to the existence of such a text in their day. Now the principle that Dr. Tregelles takes great pains to establish is as follows,--While there are certain readings sustained by the great majority of recent MSS., divergent readings of the same passages can be proved to have been in existence long before the existence of these MSS., by the evidence of the earliest MSS. of the old Latin version, by the Syriac and other translations, and by the deliberate discussion of the very peculiarities in question by some earlier writer like Origen. Now, even if there were no uncial MSS. which confirmed such divergence, this would constitute a presumption in favour of such a divergence, if some adequate explanation could be found of the commonly received text. But, if in addition to these testimonies, a considerable number of the most ancient uncial MSS. confirm such readings, then Tregelles urges the adoption of them as an approximation to the true text. Thus, take his elaborate argument in favour of the reading of Matt. xix. 17, τί με ἐρωτᾷς περὶ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ; εἷς ἐστιν ὁ ἀγαθός. This alteration was first made by Griesbach and sustained by Lachmann, and adopted subsequently by Tischendorf and Alford, though condemned by Mr. Scrivener on the ground of the numerical poverty of the evidence, and because it evinced theological zeal for the honour of the Incarnate Son. It is interesting to find, since the judgment of these recensionists was deliberately given, that the final recension of the Vatican MS. and the testimony of the Sinaitic MS. have arisen to defend it. The evidence for the existence of this text in the fourth century, or indeed before the time of Origen, and before the existence of Cureton Syriac, just proves, according to Tregelles, that it is safe 'to take the few documents whose evidence is proved to be trustworthy, and to discard the eighty-nine ninetieths of the evidence shown thus to be less valuable.' One result of his comparative criticism is, 'that as certain MSS. are found by a process of inductive proof to contain an ancient text, their character as witnesses must be considered to be so established, that in other places their testimony deserves peculiar weight;' and still further--'that the ancient MSS. were not exceptional documents, because they contain readings which we learn elsewhere to have been both ancient and widespread.'

One great advantage in Dr. Tregelles' New Testament is, that he not merely states but cites the authority of the patristic writers to whom he appeals, and by a somewhat elaborate notation enables the reader at a glance to see how his uncial MSS. and principal versions are serving him, and where all the lacunæ begin and end.

We proceed to give some further account of the contents and peculiarities of this great work. Dr. Tregelles and Dr. Alford agree in the great majority of cases where they differ from the received text, although in some instances they have not with the same facts before them, come to the same conclusion. E.g., both call attention to the fact that in John vi. 51, the clause ἣν ἐγὼ δώσω is omitted by B, C, D, L, T, 33, the Latin versions, the Cur. Syriac, Thebaic, and Æthiopic versions, and by many Fathers, and Alford even mentions a longer list of such omissions than Tregelles, but Alford allows the homoioteleuton just above, to be a sufficient explanation of the original omission in the text, and retains the clause: Tregelles strikes it out, making the verse read thus, 'and the bread which I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.' Since their discussion, the Sinaitic MS. confirms Tregelles, by not only omitting the clause, but altering the order of the words. This alteration of order may confirm Dean Alford in his continued insertion of the clause, though we think Tregelles is in the right. Through whole chapters of the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles, these two recensionists may be said to agree verbatim et literatim, and to have come precisely to the same conclusions: still a few specimens of their divergence may explain more fully than a more elaborate analysis, the character of their work. In John viii. 41, Alford prefers the less comprehensible form γεγεννήμεθα, to the form ἐγεννήθημεν, on the ground of the possible alteration of the tense to the more usual form. We do not think that Tregelles has acted here on his own principles, for he shows that versions and citations defend the former rather than the latter reading. In John viii. 54, they differ again as to the preferable character of the readings ἡμῶν or ὑμῶν, 'our God' or 'your God,' and here Tregelles defends the reading ἡμῶν with a great array of evidence; see also ch. ix. 4, where ἡμᾶς δεῖ ἐργάζεσθαι κ.τ.λ. is given as preferable to the ἐμὲ δεῖ κ.τ.λ., and largely on the ground that Origen must have been acquainted with this obscure text, and tried to interpret it. In each instance a theological zeal might have provoked a copyist to the ordinary readings. Throughout the ninth chapter of the Acts, where the received text has passed through so fiery an alembic, Alford and Tregelles agree, we believe, in every word, with one exception, and that is the word ἐπείραζεν is preferred by one to the ἐπειρᾶτο of the other in v. 26. Here strong uncial authority governs Tregelles, and the disposition to prefer the less usual or less common form has influenced Dr. Alford. In Romans v. 1, the celebrated reading ἔχωμεν in place of ἔχομεν is preferred by Tregelles. Alford still has doubts about it, from the indecision of MSS. in their modes of spelling certain vowel sounds. The quotations from Origen and Tertullian are decisive of the existence of such a text in their day, and the array of versions is strongly confirmatory of the seven uncials and two cursives that are quoted for it. We need scarcely say, that Tregelles gives his powerful authority in favour of ὃς, rather than θεὸς, in 1 Tim. iii. 16, and rejects the reference to the three heavenly witnesses in 1 John v. 7; but in spite of the authority of Tischendorf's collation of B and of א, and other authorities in favour of the received text, he gives κυρίου instead of θεοῦ as the preferable reading of Acts xx. 28.

Our author is strongly moved by the citations of Origen, and consequently places in his margin as the alternative reading in Heb. ii. 9, χωρὶς θεοῦ by the side of χάριτι θεοῦ. It is clear, from no fewer than seven citations of Origen, he must have had a MS. before him with this startling statement, 'that Jesus on the behalf of all without (or in the absence, or hiding of) God might taste death.' The only MS. authority for such a reading is the uncial fragment called M of the tenth century, so that we are surprised to see the high place given to it in Tregelles' margin. Dr. Tregelles, in the wealth of material at his disposal, sometimes almost travels into the region of the exegete, as in the long note upon Rom. ix. 5, where he gives eight or nine quotations from Greek and Latin Fathers, to show the sense in which they took the phrase, ὁ ὢν ἐπὶ πάντων θεὸς εὐλογητὸς εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας as not divided from the ὁ χριστὸς which precedes. It may be added, that he retains ἐν Ἐφέσῳ in the text of Eph. i. 1, thus preserving the traditional character of this Epistle as one addressed not to Laodiceans or any group of Asiatic churches, but to the church at Ephesus.

Dr. Tregelles and Dean Alford differ slightly in 1 Cor. iii. In the fifth verse, τί οὖν ἐστιν Απολλώς is preferred to the τίς of the Receptus, by Tregelles, while Alford sustains the latter. Tregelles has given the adjectives χρυσίον and ἀργύριον in v. 12, in place of the χρυσὸν, ἄργυρον; and ἔθηκα to the commoner τέθεικα and of v. 10. Here Alford seems to have the weight of evidence in favour of his view, though doubtless the aorist gives the finer sense, and makes the truer affirmation 'I laid,' rather than 'I have been laying the foundation.'

He leaves Ἄγαρ in brackets in his text of Gal. iv. 25. So also he deals with the εἰκῆ of Matt. v. 22. The βαπτίσαντες of Matt. xxviii. 19, given on the authority of the doubtful recensions of the Vatican MS. is most unsatisfactory. Tischendorf, who gave it in some of his earlier editions, has returned to βαπτίζοντες; and probably Dr. Tregelles will show us in his appendix that he has done the same, as א agrees with all the uncial MS. here in the more grammatical reading. We will not further trouble our readers with details. These will suffice for a specimen. Every page presents at a glance the presence of the entire group of MS. versions and fragments collated by the author, and the whole is printed with extreme beauty of type and arrangement.

In conclusion, we express our profound sense of the obligation under which the accomplished and persevering editor has laid every student of the New Testament. There is a fulness and richness of material placed here by him, at the disposal of those who are utterly precluded from this kind of investigation. The work is done so conscientiously and laboriously, that great confidence is inspired in the accuracy and reliableness of the information thus harvested for general use. The principles on which Dr. Tregelles has toiled, are so clearly put, and for the most part so patiently applied, that they command hearty respect, if not general assent. Such work as this is necessarily provisional, and cannot be regarded as final. The discovery of the Sinaitic codex and the recent collated edition of the Vatican MS. since the commencement of Tregelles' enterprise, is sufficient proof of this; and until the promised appendices appear we cannot tell to what extent this circumstance may have modified the text of our author. It is inexpressibly affecting that the labour of nearly forty years should be arrested when the patient, true-hearted scholar had just reached, as we understand, the last chapter of the Revelation, and that he should be suffering not only from prostration of strength, but be smitten in that very organ of vision which he had consecrated so lovingly to his Master's service. We can only deplore and sympathize with such disappointments as these. We are satisfied that we speak the universal desire of his collaborateurs, and of his rivals, in this lofty field of work, when we express the earnest hope that he may yet be spared to complete his labours, and to see the effect of them in the deeper reverence paid by his contemporaries to the Word of the living God.

ART. IX.--The War of 1870.

It is impossible as yet even to guess the consequences of the memorable war of 1870. It may verify the German exclamation that the hour of the Latin race has come, and that France has ceased to be a great power, or it may lead to the moral resurrection of that essentially noble people, and even to the recovery of its military supremacy. It may develope a French Republic which from its failure to turn the tide of fortune shall be followed by a Jacobin successor, and issue in a despotism of the sword not less fearful than that of Napoleon I. or it may be the forerunner of a better period when France, purified by adversity, shall win the esteem and admiration of Europe, by her constancy in affliction, her lofty patriotism, her renewed energy, her surviving genius. Looking at it, too, from the other side, it may accelerate the unity of Germany, cemented by blood poured out in the field, by a brotherhood in arms, and by common triumphs; or it may tend only to German divisions, and to the collapse of the policy of 1866, by aggrandising Prussia out of all proportions, and making her influence intolerable to the minor States. Who, indeed, shall speculate on the results of this mighty and awful conflict, when, though it seems for the time to be drawing to a close, France refuses to acknowledge defeat, and defies the invader behind the walls of the capital, and when, though apparently struck to the ground, she still raises the flag of resistance, appeals to the memories of 1793, and endeavours to rally for a final effort those national forces which, in her case, have so often proved impossible to subdue? Yet, if we shall not attempt to forecast the remote issues of this tremendous struggle, or to predict what it shall ultimately bring forth, the time has come when we can briefly describe its marvellous events and fortunes, and can truly indicate its immediate lessons of deep significance to these kingdoms. The momentous war of 1870 is not only one of the grandest illustrations of the art which founds and destroys Empires; it not only is an astonishing drama, every scene which the military student should examine carefully and lay to heart; it not only fascinates the ordinary observer by its gigantic action and immense events; it points conclusively to a solemn moral, not to be forgotten by any country which seeks to maintain its position in the world, and cherishes a sense of its independence. It shows how weak, in the hour of trial, may be even a great military power which neglects the real sources of its strength, and relies mainly on its martial traditions, on its past honour, on the memory of a name; it proves fearfully how imperial despotism may rear an edifice of imposing grandeur, which for a generation shall deceive mankind, and yet fall suddenly at the first breath of misfortune; it testifies to the old truth that material prosperity with moral corruption are the fruitful sources of national decline; and it teaches us what we should never forget, how terrible and decisive, in modern warfare, are the results of rapid and great success, and how absolutely necessary it is for England, in the present menacing condition of Europe, to surround herself with an invulnerable shield, to look after her national defences, and to take care that by sea and on land she shall possess the means of repelling aggression.

It would be an unnecessary and unprofitable task to examine at length the causes of the war. Impartial history, we believe, will pronounce that though Napoleon gave the challenge, it had been to some degree provoked by the policy of Bismark, by the attitude recently taken by Prussia, by the series of events which since 1866 have changed the centre of power in Germany. It was impossible but that the Emperor should feel bitterly how he had been outwitted by the unscrupulous statesman who had purchased his complicity in the spoliation of Denmark by promises of annexation on the Rhine, and had afterwards coolly violated his pledges; nor yet that he should not be really alarmed at the immense development of the military power of Prussia during the preceding five years. It would have been disregarding the traditions which, rightly or wrongly, for two centuries have guided the foreign policy of France, to have witnessed the absorption of the German States into one dominant and threatening power, without an effort to break the union; and if an attempt to obtain this, was contrary to modern ideas and aspirations, it was only carrying out what had always been the views of Henry IV. and Richelieu. Besides, ever since the battle of Sadowa, France and Prussia had been watching each other, and tending inevitably to collision; both Powers had been increasing their armaments, and events have proved which was the more ready; and we know from the Imperial correspondence that Napoleon had been repeatedly warned that Prussia was meditating an invasion of France, and would avail herself of the first opportunity. It is not, therefore, too much to say that it was not merely French folly and arrogance which precipitated this tremendous conflict; the conduct of Prussia and her aggressive acts contributed to it in no slight degree; and if France, as it has turned out, was unwise in not accepting accomplished facts, and in chafing at the military strength of her rival, we can perfectly comprehend this sentiment, without charging her, as a nation, with any peculiar turn for aggrandisement, or even any extraordinary ambition. It must be admitted that the Emperor was utterly in the wrong in the pretext on which he declared war, and that his whole policy in this respect showed ignorance of the real state of opinion. After the Hohenzollern candidature of Spain had been withdrawn at the instance of England, it was an act of extreme unwisdom to have proceeded to further demands; and the result was that, to outward seeming, France, at the beginning of hostilities, was alone to blame for the frightful contest, and that Prussia appeared the injured defender of the national independence of Germany. In truth, however, in this as in other matters, Bismark probably outgeneralled Napoleon; he seems to have been eager for war, and to have been too glad to find an opportunity to attack France with the support of public opinion; and now at least when he puts forward claims to wrest from her some of her present provinces, he can scarcely be considered by impartial men as the mere opponent of French aggression.

Hostilities were proclaimed on the 15th of July, after efforts at negotiation on the part of England. There can be little doubt that the war was welcomed by the classes who form public opinion in Germany, quite as much as in France. The passionate and foolish cry, 'to Berlin,' was answered by shouts of defiance, 'to Paris;' and if French chauvins and journalists talked of the annexation of the left bank of the Rhine, and of the breaking up of the German Confederation, claims for 'the lost patrimony of Elsass and Lothringen' were put forward prominently by the press of Germany. In fact, amiable German professors who back the arrogant demands of Bismark, and pleasantly insist on 'the line of the Vosges,' as a necessary bulwark for 'peace-loving Germany,' against the 'intolerable ambition of Frenchmen,' must have a strange notion of the facts of the case; the war fever was at least as strong in the capital of Prussia, as in that of France; and it is about as correct to represent the two nations as differing in this, as it is to repeat the veracious legend--of which of course the League of Pilnitz and the barbarous invasion of 1792 are confirmations that cannot be gainsaid--that France has always been the assailant of her meek and long-suffering Teutonic rival. Within a few days after the declaration of war, the army of the Rhine was set in motion, and the heads of the columns of eight French corps were approaching the verge of the German frontier; the main bodies, however, being still distant. The first corps, under the renowned MacMahon, had advanced from Algeria and the south, and occupied Upper and Lower Alsace, its headquarters being at Strasburg. The second and fifth corps of Frossard and De Failly were sent forward, and at St. Avold and Bitsche held the approaches to the Rhenish Palatinate, from MacMahon's left to near the line of the Saar. To the left of these again, was the fourth corps, marched from the north under L'Admirault, and stationed at and around Thionville; while, in the rear, Bazaine with the third corps, was moving to the great fortress of Metz; the sixth, under the orders of Canrobert, was on its way from Chalons to Lorraine; and far behind, the Imperial Guard--the flower of the French army--was pushing forward from the French capital. In the meantime, the seventh corps of Douay formed the extreme right of the great French line; far to the north it guarded Belfort, the 'gate of France,' between the Vosges and the Jura; and it connected itself with MacMahon's rear-guard along the Rhine and Lower Alsace. The whole French army, in its first line, extended in a huge semicircle from Northern Lorraine to the Southern Vosges; but its second line, massed between Metz and Chalons, was at a considerable distance from the first; and though it was well connected by railways, and placed as it was, it threatened equally the Rhenish provinces and Southern Germany, it was not yet even nearly concentrated.

Such was the disposition of the army of the Rhine about the 21st or 22nd of July. It will be seen at once that it was well adapted for an offensive movement against Germany, if made rapidly and in full force, for Baden and the Palatinate were threatened, and the exact point of attack was concealed. Placed as they were, the forces of France could either pour into the Rhineland, drawing after them their reserves on all sides, or they could cross the Rhine, and, advancing from Strasburg, interpose between Northern and Southern Germany and endeavour to break up their uniting armies. On the other hand, the position of the French was badly chosen as a line of defence; for their foremost corps were widely disseminated, and in case of a sudden attack, were thrown too far beyond their supports; and if they were assailed by a resolute foe, converging against them in full strength, they would be exposed to serious disaster. For these reasons we may certainly infer that the strategic plan of the French Emperor was to march upon the Germans with much rapidity, and whether the recently published pamphlet does or does not disclose his purpose, it is evident that he intended to advance either by the Rhineland on Landau and Mayence, or by Strasburg into the territory of Baden. Besides, he must have known perfectly well that a brilliant initiative was his best chance; for not only was it in accordance with the traditions and genius of the French soldier; not only was it calculated to sow dissensions and alarm among his foes and perhaps prevent them from combining; it was the sole means to give full effect to the one great advantage which France would possess over Prussia at the beginning of a campaign, the imposing strength of a standing army, supposed to be ready at all points and formidable in its numerical proportions, compared with levies, immense indeed when brought together and set in motion, but believed to be inferior in military power, and requiring time to be fully arrayed. It may therefore be said with confidence, that a sudden and vigorous spring on Germany was the real scheme of Napoleon III.; and, notwithstanding all that has occurred, it is impossible to say what the result would have been had this design been carried out boldly, with the promptness and skill of a great commander who would have led his troops to immediate victory. Unhappily, however, for the interests of France, vacillation at the decisive moment took the place of resolution and genius; and her armed arrays, however imposing to outward seeming, were not in a state to undertake great and rapid operations. The Emperor lingered a fortnight at Paris before he went to his headquarters at Metz; even when he had arrived he passed nearly a week, uncertain, it would appear, how to strike; and thus the favourable opportunity was lost which might have changed the whole course of the war. In addition to this, it is now well known that the army was not ready to march; its commissariat was not complete; it was deficient in ammunition and supplies; and its real strength was considerably less than Napoleon III. had been led to expect. Between the irresolution of its chief, and its own ill-prepared condition, it had already forfeited its most hopeful chances before even a blow had been struck.

During these delays of the army of the Rhine Germany had been making astonishing efforts. If Bismark's reports are to be believed, the German nation was not prepared for immediate war on a gigantic scale. But considering that since the battle of Sadowa Prussia had been steadily increasing her armaments, and that it is tolerably clear from her government press that she was eager to measure her strength with France, we shall scarcely credit the Northern Confederation with any want of military readiness; still immense as their exertions were, it is not impossible that the Southern States were taken to some extent by surprise. However this may have been, the summons to arms against the ancient and dreaded foe met with but one answer from the Teutonic race; and whatever may be thought of the policy of its rulers, its patriotism and heroic attitude are entitled to the highest admiration. From the sandy wastes that border the Niemen to the valleys watered by the Moselle, and from the shores of the Northern Sea to the Danube and the Bohemian hills, the martial cry 'to the war' was heard; the integrity of the Fatherland was the one thought of the whole people; and whatever may have been the divisions caused by the events of 1866, and whatever the hopes of dispossessed sovereigns, of blind diplomatists, or of discontented nobles, it was soon evident that Napoleon III. would have to contend against an united Germany. This single circumstance shows how impolitic had been the course of the French Emperor, and how badly he had been advised; and, in fact, unless, as is not improbable, the conduct of Prussia shall tend to disunion, the war will have done more to make Germany a concordant people than any event since 1813. Within a few days the military system of the nation was in full operation; the army was 'mobilized' and increased to its war strength within the local limits assigned to its different divisions, and in an exceedingly short time a gigantic array composed of regular troops in the first line, with reserves of landwehr in the second, was in a state to commence operations under the guidance of leaders of proved ability. Those who witnessed that mighty torrent of war pouring through Germany towards the Rhenish frontier have described its tremendous power and impulse; and none who have observed how it was directed can doubt that it had been long held in hand to commence as well as to repel aggression. Towards the last days of July and the first of August, while the French were still disseminated in Lorraine, three vast German armies had taken possession of the territory of the Rhenish Palatinate, and, already in communication with each other, were being marshalled to pour into France an overwhelming tide of invasion. The first army, numbering about 80,000 men, was under the command of the aged Steinmetz, and was approaching the Saar from Treves, its outposts reaching to near Saar-Louis. The second army, nearly 200,000 strong, had crossed the Rhine at and above Mayence, and, led by King William and Prince Frederick Charles, held the centre of the Rhenish Palatinate, its outposts almost advanced to the Saar, and its rearward divisions stretching far backwards. To the left was the third army, commanded by the Crown Prince of Prussia, about 150,000 strong; it touched the right of the second army, and extended thence to the course of the Rhine, and its vanguard, along the stream of the Lauter, approached the northern frontier of Alsace, the main body being not distant, and concealed behind the adjoining fortresses. From Treves on the west to Landau on the east, and pressing forward to the very edge of France, the huge German masses were already in a state to fall on their enemy with tremendous force.

The manner in which these immense armies were formed, organised, and moved in concert within a short distance of the French frontier, was one of the most notable of strategic exploits. In the space of nineteen or twenty days 430,000 men in the highest state of efficiency for war, with guns, horses, and other material, had been arrayed and prepared for the field, and now stood on the verge of the Rhineland ready to overrun Alsace and Lorraine. We know of no finer military movement, except perhaps the splendid concentration of Napoleon's forces on the Belgian frontier on the 14th of June, 1815; and it attests clearly the calculating forethought and ability of the Prussian Government, the high training and skill of its generals, and the discipline and power of the German troops. The French army, scattered and divided on the semicircle from Thionville to Belfort, and with its first line widely separated from the second, was already in no condition to offer a successful resistance to its mighty foe; it was not only much weaker in strength, being outnumbered fully two to one at the decisive points where it was threatened, it was also so disunited in its parts, that it could hardly collect 60,000 men in any position to withstand an attack. In fact, a glance at the map will show that along the whole line of the Saar and the Lauter it was exposed to be defeated in detail by a force infinitely superior in power; and this peril was aggravated by the circumstance, placed beyond dispute by the clearest evidence, that it believed itself completely secure, and that its leaders were planning a forward movement while their enemy was close at hand to destroy them.

It is now well known that a German advance was not suspected in the French camp even during the first three days of August: the woods along the edge of the frontier were not searched by the French outposts, and the German columns were allowed to collect in force behind this deceptive screen while the Emperor and his Marshals were dreaming of a march without an obstacle into the Rhenish provinces. The consequences of this ruinous neglect and self-deception became soon evident. On the 4th of August the Crown Prince of Prussia detached a part of his vast army to attack the extreme right of the whole French line, this movement being only the first step of a general advance across the French frontier. The Prince, with about 40,000 men, fell upon a single division of about 10,000 which lay encamped near the town of Weissenburg, surprised it, it is said, when at breakfast, and drove it back in a state of confusion. The French, rallying on the Geisberg, made a gallant resistance for a short time; but the hill having been stormed by the enemy, they were ultimately driven in utter rout from beyond Weissenburg on the road to Strasburg. The first success, so important in war, had thus been decisively won; the trophies of the day were 500 prisoners, a gun, and a great deal of material; and the advanced guard of the German army stood in triumph upon the soil of France, the right wing of the French forces having been already threatened and struck, and the secret of their want of preparation having been disclosed to their able antagonists.

The affair at Weissenburg was only the prelude of operations of a more serious kind. The 5th of August was spent by the Crown Prince in bringing the mass of his troops forward, and in arraying them for a formidable attack on the French forces in his immediate front. There can be no doubt that in making these dispositions he exposed his flank to the corps of De Failly, which, stationed at Bitsche, beyond the Vosges, ought to have combined with that of McMahon, and fallen on the right of the Prussian commander, while, as yet, his columns were not closed up, and his whole line was somewhat out of order. This movement, however, was not executed; the want of intelligence and the vacillation which characterised the operations of the French, were again too painfully conspicuous; and though De Failly sent one division through the hill passes to the aid of his colleague, he remained at Bitsche with the bulk of his troops, and left MacMahon completely isolated. Meanwhile that brave, but unfortunate chief, made preparations to resist the attack of the Germans, now evidently impending. It is a misconception to suppose, as some have done, that he advanced recklessly against his foe; what he did was to take and occupy a defensive position on the flank of the Germans, where he could hope to give them battle, under circumstances of the least disadvantage, and De Failly, if he wished, could come to his aid; and we assert, with confidence, that this strategy was the best open to the Duke of Magenta. The marshal by the evening of the 5th had drawn up his forces along the crest of a range which extends from Reichsofen on the left by Woerth to Elsasshausen, and Marbronn on the right, and which, with the stream of the Sauer in front, and with broken ground along the rising slopes, formed a strong position against his enemy. MacMahon's object evidently was to compel the Germans to turn against him, and assail him as they changed their front; he would thus divert them from the road to Strasburg, and engage them as favourably for himself as possible; and at the same time, he as it were summoned the corps of De Failly to join his rear, while he kept open several lines of retreat. These were the arrangements of an able commander; and considering that MacMahon had not more than 50,000 men in his band, his dispositions certainly give proof of the tactical skill for which he is renowned. On the morning of the 6th, the Crown Prince advanced to the attack, with 130,000 men, and not less than 440 guns. As MacMahon had calculated, the change of front, which the Germans were compelled to make, threw their line for some time into confusion; and the French repelled for several hours a somewhat feeble and disunited effort against their left, at and near Reichsofen. Meantime the French centre at Woerth had been engaged; there too, for a considerable time, MacMahon's divisions resisted stoutly, and even for a moment assumed the offensive. But about two o'clock the huge German line had come up on all sides in strength; and the Crown Prince prepared to turn the French wings at both sides, combining with this an attack in front--a movement justified by his superiority in force, but certainly not without hazard. MacMahon, who, at this conjuncture, De Failly not having come up, ought, in our judgment, to have retreated, struck desperately at the German centre at Woerth, thinned by the extension of its flanks; but the French onset was bravely resisted, and indeed it could not have been successful. Ere long the formidable outflanking movement developed itself, and became decisive; and from Reichsofen to beyond Marbronn the dense German columns extended threateningly, and overlapped the whole French position. A sudden panic fell on MacMahon's army; its right and centre gave way; and it was soon a mass of disheartened fugitives, broken on all sides into disunited fragments. Six thousand prisoners and thirty guns were the spoils of the victorious Germans; and for some time the defeated force was annihilated, in a military point of view.

It cannot be said that the Germans' tactics were remarkable for ability or boldness during the first part of this desperate battle. They attacked weakly, and in divided masses; they gave MacMahon more than one chance; and with their immense superiority of numbers their victory ought to have been more decisive. On the other hand the French Marshal showed talent in his original dispositions; he resisted his enemy during several hours, and at one time placed him in much danger; and had he when he had been assured that De Failly's corps was not coming up, effected a rapid and confident retreat, he would have been entitled to commendation. MacMahon, however, held his ground too long; and when the Crown Prince, who, as soon as he had ascertained the inferiority of the French in strength, displayed consummate energy and skill, had advanced on Reichsofen and Marbronn, it was almost inevitable that the French line should give way and be totally defeated. As regards the conduct of the opposing armies, the Germans, cautious and slow at first, became at last self-reliant and bold; the French fought long with 'consummate bravery,'--we quote the German official report--but they broke up hastily under the stress of disaster--a fault almost a national characteristic. The strategic consequences of the battle were in the highest degree important. The whole right wing of the French army, overpowered by immensely superior forces, was driven in and almost destroyed; it had no chance but to retreat behind the Vosges, too fortunate if it could make its escape; Alsace was thrown open to the enemy, and an avenue into the heart of France laid bare. This result was in some measure due to the criminal negligence of De Failly, who, if he had chosen, might have joined MacMahon, and whose corps might have changed the fate of the day; but it was also caused by the bad arrangement of the whole French line upon the position, which at no point was in sufficient strength to offer a firm and certain resistance. This, indeed, was made evident, at the same time, at another part of the theatre of operations. While the Crown Prince was attacking MacMahon, a German division of the First Army crossed the Saar and advanced to Saarbrück, where a few days before the corps of Frossard had made a demonstration on the frontier, in order, it has been supposed, to gratify the curiosity of the Prince Imperial. The French were completely surprised; but, pressing hastily forward, they advanced to repulse the audacious foe, who with great boldness resisted steadily for some time. Meanwhile another German division had come to the aid of their comrades; and seizing promptly the cover of woods which overlapped the right of the French, they wasted it away with a destructive fire; and further supports having come up, the Germans stormed with heroic valour a line of heights called the Spicheren hills, which formed the front of the French position. The whole French line had begun to give way; and an additional mass of foes appearing on their extreme left, and having outflanked it, they retreated in precipitate haste, leaving a considerable number of guns and prisoners.

The two engagements of the 6th of August, named respectively those of Woerth and Forbach, were fraught with results of great moment. It was not only that the renowned French army which had been supposed to be the first in the world had suffered a double crushing defeat, in one instance of a dishonourable kind; not only that it had lost its prestige and given proof of want of steadiness, of indiscipline, and of disorganization; the invasion of Germany was now impossible; the South had been united to the North by the pledge of common military success; and there was nothing to avert the victorious progress of the German masses on the French frontier. The situation, in fact, had been suddenly changed; and Europe, which up to that moment had been expecting a French advance, was now to witness the calamitous recoil of the Imperial forces at all points, attended with ever increasing disasters. The right wing of the French army, well-nigh cut off and destroyed at Woerth, was driven in rout out of Alsace and compelled to abandon Strasburg to its fate; and it would be too fortunate if it could rally at Châlons, drawing to it the corps of De Failly and Douay. The right centre, broken through at Forbach, was forced backward upon Metz; and the centre and left, involved in its defeat, were obliged to fall back in the same direction. Meanwhile the Germans ably directed, and collected in overwhelming strength, poured into France in the successive waves of an invasion that nothing could resist. The Crown Prince's army, in communication with the Second by a cordon of cavalry sent through the Vosges, detached a part of its force to besiege Strasburg, and with its remaining divisions poured forward through Lower Alsace in pursuit of MacMahon. The Second Army advancing from the Rhineland, swept across the Saar in immense forces, and passed into the north of Lorraine, driving before it the feeble French corps now seeking a refuge under the guns of Metz. Meanwhile, the Third Army made a parallel movement; and, uniting with the right of the Second, marched rapidly in overwhelming front on Metz, already threatening with its right wing to overlap and surround the great fortress. By the 18th August, 300,000 Germans with large reserves in their immediate rear had made good their way into France, and from Strasburg to Thionville and thence into the heart of Lorraine, were taking military possession of the country and menacing with ruin the enemy in their path.

During this mighty advance of the Germans, the strategic operations of the French, in part owing to the bad disposition of their forces for combined movements, and in part to the weakness of their commanders, had been characterised by much indecision. MacMahon, indeed, had effected his retreat from the field of Woerth with the wreck of his troops, and escaped safely through the Vosges passes; and though his corps was almost ruined, he had shown some ability in getting away, for he ought to have been destroyed by the Germans. In fact, the pursuit of the Crown Prince had not been marked by energy or speed, whatever indiscriminate flatterers may urge; his own reports more than once refer to the comparative slackness of his cavalry or at least to their extreme caution. De Failly, too, though the disaster at Woerth must be laid to a great extent to his charge, had been prompt in breaking up from Bitsche, and he had succeeded in approaching MacMahon without being caught by the enemy; his escape, however, being in a great measure due to the resistance made by the fortress of Bitsche, which retarded the march of one of the Crown Prince's columns. The broken right of the French army, though its losses had been terrible, and its morale was destroyed, was, in a word, making good its way to Châlons; and, as the corps of Douay was moving towards it, and as the whole mass was about to concentrate, we cannot find fault with these arrangements. But in the remaining part of the theatre of war the French dispositions revealed nothing but feebleness, vacillation, and want of forethought. The instant Woerth and Forbach were fought, and the right and right centre of the French were forced back on either side of the Vosges, it cannot be doubted that the whole French army ought to have retreated in a parallel line; and it ought certainly to have retired on Châlons, having thrown a strong garrison into Metz, for it was at Châlons only that it could hope to reunite, and when there it would be in a position to save Paris and defend the interior on the well-known lines of the Marne and Seine. To effect this would not have been easy, for the disseminated state of the corps on the frontier from Thionville to Forbach and thence backward to Metz exposed them whatever moves they attempted; but this was what ought to have been done, and the attempt would have probably succeeded. Instead of this the unfortunate emperor drew in his left and centre on the Nied--and when he had collected these behind the river, he halted five or six days at Metz, uncertain evidently what to do next, and hesitating, while there was time to fall back on Châlons. The reason of this strange and fatal fault, through which the main body of the French army was exposed to be cut off and destroyed, remains as yet to be explained; it was probably owing to vacillation and to the dread of terrifying Paris by the news of a general retrograde movement. While the bulk of the Army of the Rhine was being detained in camp around Metz, completely separated from its supports in Champagne, the German armies advanced to the Moselle; and while a part of the First and Second Armies were massed close to the great fortress a considerable detachment was thrown forward, to menace and fall on the French line of retreat should an attempt be made to retire on Châlons.

The results of these strategic arrangements, so different in ability and forethought, were developed ere long with great distinctness. On the 14th of August one detachment of the French army with the Emperor at its head, left Metz and crossed to the left bank of the Moselle; and this ultimately reached Châlons, where it effected its junction with MacMahon. The remaining corps endeavoured to begin their retrograde movement the same day, but being on the eastern side of the fortress, and their great numbers impeding their march, they were attacked by two corps of the Germans, whose vigorous onset held them in check. The combat lasted the whole day; and each side claimed to have won the victory; but the real issue was in favour of the Germans, who detained their antagonists round Metz, while their own troops were being pushed forward to occupy the French line of retreat. Next day, the 15th, the whole French army began to defile to the left bank of the Moselle; but it marched only ten or twelve miles on the two roads to Verdun and Etain, the avenues by which it would reach Châlons; and it bivouacked at Mars La Tour and Doncourt, still, as it proved, not far from its enemy. The causes of this disastrous delay, fraught with consequences of a ruinous kind, remain yet to be explained; much was doubtless due to the extreme difficulty of moving columns of great length and size, encumbered with baggage and other impediments; and it is not improbable that a desire to avoid the appearance of a hasty retreat may have had influence on the French commanders. It is certain, however, that a greater distance should have been accomplished by the retiring force; it was of vital importance to get clear at once of the foes gathering on the flank and rear; and Marshal Bazaine, who by this time certainly had been invested with the supreme command, unquestionably committed a grave error in not having pressed forward the movement. The next day it was too late; and the Germans found themselves in a position to achieve success, which it is quite clear from their own despatches, they never expected. On the morning of the 16th, the retreating French were attacked on the Verdun road by the cavalry and infantry of a German corps, which continued for some hours to hold them in check; and aid having come to the assailants, a sanguinary battle raged at Mars La Tour, one side endeavouring to cut its way through, the other struggling to bar the passage. Throughout the day fresh supports thrown forward judiciously on the flanks of the French, gave terrible effect to the German attacks; and their enemy, bound to a single road, and in their extended columns fatally exposed, was compelled to fight at a great disadvantage. The French, however, fought desperately, aware of the importance of the issue; and it is possible that they would have resisted successfully, had it not been for a brilliant charge of a large mass of cavalry towards the evening, which forced them back a considerable distance. Meanwhile, a simultaneous attack had been made on the Etain road, and though the French struggled with great courage, this too ultimately proved successful. The whole French army about nightfall withdrew sullenly towards Metz, having failed to make its retreat good, and the Germans, closing on its communications, already stood on its way to Châlons.

Driven thus to bay under the guns of Metz, Bazaine resolved to concentrate his forces in order to fight a decisive battle. He had probably 130,000 men in hand, with from 400 to 500 guns, the flower and strength of the French army; and his plan was to choose a defensive position where he could resist the onslaught of the Germans, and, having repulsed it, could break through their lines, and get off with the mass of his troops. With this object he drew up his men along the summit of a range of uplands, extending from Gravelotte before Metz, to beyond the hamlet of Privat La Montagne, and which, broken by streams and difficult ground, and with woods, villages, and thickets in front, offered a strong barrier to an attacking enemy. The French left rested on Gravelotte, the centre on Vionville and Amanvilliers, and the right stretched away to Doncourt and Jaumont, the whole line thus holding the roads which debouche to Verdun, Etain, and Sedan, protected by natural and artificial obstacles. This was a position of the strongest kind, considered as a scheme of defence, for it exposed the assailants at most points, and especially at that of Gravelotte, to a terrible fire at great disadvantage; but, as the result showed, it was deficient in this, that it gave no opportunity for a counter attack, and it enabled the Germans to draw round from all sides on the enemy before them. The 17th was spent by each army in preparing for a decisive engagement. The German commanders by this time had 240,000 men, with from 700 to 800 guns, and they resolved to attack according to a plan, which, if perilous in some degree, was justified by their superior numbers, and promised great and remarkable success. While the right of the Germans was to restrain the French left, their centre and left were to march across the whole front of Bazaine's position, and having overwhelmed his right wing, the weakest point in his defensive lines, they were to converge inwards upon the French and force them back in retreat on Metz. On the morning of the 18th, three German corps began to engage the French at Gravelotte, while at the same time, five and a half corps moved towards Vionville and Privat La Montagne, in order to execute the great turning movement which was to lead to the expected victory. The French, immoveable in their positions, were compelled to await the circling attack which threatened to stifle and hem them in; unlike Napoleon I. at Austerlitz, Bazaine had not secured the means of striking his enemy as he swept round on him. Towards the afternoon, the Prussian guards had outflanked the right of the Marshal; soon afterwards, his centre was fiercely assailed, and by degrees the great German line advanced snakelike to encompass its foe. It was now time for the German right to strike fiercely at Gravelotte; and here a battle of the most desperate kind raged until nightfall for several hours, the French certainly having the advantage, and destroying the Germans with frightful carnage. But gradually the German plan was worked out; the German masses converging on all sides forced the French backward from point to point; and at last the whole line of defence gave way, and retreating, slowly fell back on Metz, having lost the real object of the battle.

It is not improbable that, in this conflict, the losses of the Germans exceeded those of the French. At Gravelotte the corps commanded by Steinmetz was repeatedly driven back with terrific slaughter, and at other points the ranks of the assailants were cruelly thinned by a destructive fire. But if in a tactical point of view the battle was hardly a German victory, and if the resistance of Bazaine with an inferior force was honourable to him, the strategic results were great and decisive. The Germans had now obtained possession of the entire line of the Marshal's retreat; they barred the way to Châlons completely, and he had been forced back with his army on Metz, where, his communications with France being cut off, he would be ultimately compelled to surrender. Unless he could again begin the contest and pierce through the encircling foes, no prospect awaited him but to resist until famine dashed the sword from his grasp, and made the army of the Rhine captive--so ruinous had been the disastrous generalship which had detained it in isolation at Metz, and had allowed its enemies to gather round it instead of effecting a speedy retreat!

Leaving Bazaine in this perilous strait, we must now turn to another part of the theatre, where folly, rashness, and above all the exigencies of the political situation, were to complete the work of irresolute weakness in contributing to the ruin of France. About the 16th or 17th of August MacMahon had made good his way to Châlons with the wreck of his corps defeated at Woerth, and he was rejoined in a day or two by De Failly, who had contrived to elude the pursuing Germans--a retreat which proves that the Crown Prince had moved slowly and with much caution, and had not made the most of his brilliant victory. About the 19th of August the corps of Douay, marched back from Belfort, arrived at Châlons; this body, at the news of the battle of Woerth, having properly retired to the great strategic point which nature and history have alike marked out as the position where the defence of France should be undertaken in front of Paris. Next day, the 20th, about 70,000 men, with more than 100 guns, came up hastily from the French capital, the Government under Count Palikao having certainly made energetic efforts to reorganize and recruit the army; and thus MacMahon, by the 21st, had probably about 150,000 men, with from 400 to 500 guns, under his orders at the great camp at Châlons. When we recollect what Napoleon I. accomplished on this very ground--the memorable lines of the Marne and Seine--with a force greatly inferior in numbers, against more than 300,000 Germans, it cannot be doubted that a great commander would have made such an use of this army that he would long have kept the invaders back, and possibly changed the whole situation. But ability and caution were especially requisite, for the troops now under MacMahon's orders were in fact raw or demoralized soldiers; and plain common sense ought to have suggested that they were not fit for operations that demanded speed, or that could bring them in contact with a superior enemy.

At this critical moment a plan was formed, the responsibility for which is unknown, but which led to the greatest of military disasters. Considering the state of MacMahon's forces, there can be no doubt that his proper course was to delay his enemies as they advanced on Châlons, to endeavour to defend the Marne and the Seine, and, retreating slowly, to fall back until he had reached a position at which he would be in the flank of the Germans as they approached Paris. A great general, operating in this way, would have retarded the foe for weeks, would certainly have inflicted much injury on him, and while he inured his own troops to war, would assuredly have kept his army intact in order to make a stand for the capital, the fortifications of which, with a force before them, would perhaps have changed the issue of the campaign. It is true that the strategy would have been an apparent abandonment of Bazaine; but this really was inevitable. Bazaine, as the event proved, was not in need of immediate relief; shut up, as he was, inactive at Metz, he still detained an immense mass of Germans around the great fortress; and in any case, as affairs now stood, the first consideration ought to have been the security of the last army of France, and a settled purpose to defend the capital. Had Wellington been in MacMahon's place, we are convinced that these would have been his tactics; and we feel certain that he would have succeeded, if not in defeating the Germans in the field, at least in greatly reducing their strength, in preserving Paris from real danger, and in saving his forces for an effort to be undertaken when his raw troops were rendered more equal to their antagonists. Instead of a rational operation like this, a resolve was made at the French head-quarters which can only be described as insanely rash. It was determined to relieve Bazaine with MacMahon's weak and undisciplined army; and the manner in which this was to be done was marked by thoughtless and strange presumption. The French troops were to leave Châlons, and moving northwards to Rheims and Rethel, were to strike from that place across the Argonnes, to pass the Meuse and attain Montmédy, and descending thence upon Thionville, were to fall on the rear of the Germans at Metz, to extricate Bazaine, and in conjunction with him, to annihilate the astounded enemy by an attack worthy of the first Napoleon. By this operation MacMahon's army was to slip round the flank of the Crown Prince, known to be advancing from Nancy on Châlons; it would probably attain the northern frontier before its destination could be ascertained; and if it ever reached the neighbourhood of Metz and came into communication with Bazaine, what would be the fate of the insolent invaders, and what the triumphant issue of a campaign begun under ill-omened auspices?

Whether the pamphlet recently published at Brussels be the work of Napoleon III. or not, it is now clear that Marshal MacMahon was not the real author of this strategy. A glance at the map will clearly show that it exposed the French army to ruinous disaster, and it has been proved that it was inspired by the Government of the Regency at Paris, ill-informed as to the real situation, and fearful lest a retrograde movement should cause the sudden fall of the Empire. And what was the projected operation, which it was assumed was proposed by an eminent French Marshal, who, we may suppose, knew the art of war, and certainly had very great experience? It was simply to make an immense flank march with a weak and thoroughly untrained army, within full reach of an enemy twice as strong, who would be able to arrest the movement, and to fall on his adversary in overwhelming force; and it was to do this along a line on which a defeat would probably entail destruction, or a surrender upon the Belgian frontier. Let it be granted that MacMahon might expect to cross the Meuse before he would be intercepted, still it was all but certain that the German armies, which assuredly would turn northward at once, would come up with him between the Meuse and Thionville; and if he were caught, what chance had he of contending against the enormous forces which, in that event, would be directed against him? A crushing defeat was to be expected, and if he were defeated would not his army, hemmed in along the narrow belt of land extending from the northern Argmues to Lorraine, be either utterly broken to fragments or forced helplessly to lay down its arms? And it was for a reckless scheme such as this--one in which success was hardly conceivable, and of which ruin would be the natural result--that the rational and legitimate course of retreating leisurely and defending Paris from point to point, was to be abandoned! The correspondence recently published shows that this plan did not originate with MacMahon; and that it was adopted must be ascribed to the necessity felt at the Tuileries of avoiding a retrograde movement in the interest of the tottering Empire. MacMahon, however, did consent to it; and for this he must be held responsible. Beyond all doubt he ought to have rejected a project fraught with calamity to his country, at the risk even of resigning his command; had he done so, the position of France might have been different from what it is now, and his own reputation would not have suffered from the consequences of a dire catastrophe. Making every allowance for his difficult situation, we cannot acquit him of want of resolution, though sheer ignorance and incapacity did not lead him to make the greatest of blunders ever made perhaps by a commander-in-chief.

Our space precludes us from describing at length the series of great events that ensued. On the 22nd of August MacMahon's army, already giving melancholy proofs of weakness, indiscipline, and insubordination, had reached Rheims from the camp of Châlons; and on the 23rd it was on its way to Rethel. The march of the columns was extremely sluggish, in consequence of the bad organisation of the troops, and eye-witnesses have recorded that the unfortunate marshal was even now evidently dispirited and anxious. Rethel was not passed until the 25th; and as the movement to the Meuse and the Argmues was to be accomplished as soon as possible, MacMahon divided his army into three parts; one to go northward, by railway to Mézières, and the other two to advance easterly by Vouziers and Nouart, and Le Chène and Stonne. The Emperor and his ill-fated child attended mournfully the doomed army, but if we are to credit newspaper reports, Napoleon III. still felt confident that he was marching to assured victory. Though the dispositions of the French marshal were evidently made with a view to speed, the movement of his columns was exceedingly slow, no doubt owing to their inefficient state, and also probably to commissariat defects; and even by the morning of the 29th they had only attained Nouart and Stonne, that is, they were still a day's march from the Meuse, which they ought to have found on the 28th. These delays aggravating the inherent perils of a strategic plan essentially vicious, were sure to lead to disastrous consequences; and while MacMahon had been going northwards the German commanders had been preparing the means of utterly overwhelming him. On the 19th and 20th of August, after Bazaine had been shut up in Metz, a fourth German army had been despatched, under the command of the Crown Prince of Saxony, to co-operate with that of the Crown Prince of Prussia, and it had been moved by Verdun, on St. Menehould, to be in readiness for any event. Meanwhile the third German army, after passing Nancy, had advanced on the great road to Paris to Ligny and Bar le Duc, its light cavalry, the well-known Uhlans, having scoured the whole country to beyond Châlons. By the 24th the Crown Prince of Prussia, who had been rejoined by the king from Metz, had his head-quarters at Bar le Duc, and when there the news arrived that MacMahon had broken up from the camp, and was aiming northward toward Mézières and Rethel. The plan of the French was immediately perceived by the eminent strategist who in this campaign had been the genius of the German armies, and he proceeded to defeat it, and ensure victory. Orders were at once issued to the Crown Prince of Saxony to move northerly towards the Meuse, and intercept the heads of MacMahon's columns; while the third German army, under the Prussian Prince, was to advance rapidly in the same direction, and fall on the French flank and rear. By the 25th the huge German array, numbering nearly 250,000 men, with from 700 to 800 guns, was marching forward in dense masses to overwhelm the much weaker force that incautiously presented its flanks to it, and that soon would be within its formidable reach.

By the 28th and 29th of August the game began to be gradually developed. The vanguard of the Tenth German Army, having passed Verdun and reached the Meuse, appears to have crossed the river at Stenay, and it struck one of MacMahon's columns about Buzancy and again at Nouart. Meanwhile the army of the Crown Prince of Prussia advancing by Clermont, Grand Pré, and Suippes, had closed on the flank and rear of the Marshal and had made it certain that he would be overtaken. Headed thus, as they approached the Meuse, and threatened with a destructive attack, which, if successful, would prove ruinous, the French were compelled to diverge northwards, and MacMahon endeavoured to make his escape though his case was already well-nigh desperate. Drawing one of his columns towards the other, and leaving a strong rear-guard at Beaumont, with orders to make a determined resistance, he sought to concentrate his remaining forces, and having passed the Meuse between Sedan and Mouzon, to move rapidly on Carignan, and thence to march direct on Montmédy, thus eluding the tightening grasp of the Prussians. In these operations we see the windings of a general who feels that a disaster is at hand; but, situated as MacMahon was, they were the best that could have been made. By the morning of the 30th the whole French army, except the corps at Beaumont, was collected from Lethêne to near Stenay; and it has been said that the unhappy Emperor was still confident as to the issue. His powerful antagonists were not likely to allow their prey to slip out of their clutches. The German columns on the 29th had closed more firmly on their retiring enemy; and while a portion of the Fourth Army had taken possession of both banks of the Meuse, the Third was in readiness to attack Beaumont, and to press MacMahon as he crossed the river. These dispositions assured success which could hardly fail to be ultimately decisive. As the French army approached the Meuse, the Crown Prince of Prussia made an attack on the detachment which had been left at Beaumont; and these corps, commanded by the incapable De Failly, were overwhelmed after a feeble resistance. Meanwhile MacMahon had contrived to get two of his corps across the river, which had marched towards Carignan; but as the remaining ones were passing they were caught and routed by the Crown Prince of Prussia with a great loss of guns and men at Mouzon. At the same time the Fourth German Army advancing from the right bank of the Meuse, had driven the French from the road to Carignan; and thus the whole French army baffled and defeated was forced in confusion still further northward. By the evening of the 30th its routed divisions had been re-formed in front of Sedan behind the defensive line of the Chiers, the huge German forces gathering all round and hemming in their intended victim.

We can only devote a few sentences to describe the decisive battle that ensued. The 31st of August was spent by MacMahon in drawing up his army in a line of defence extending from Givonne on the Belgian frontier, across ranges of eminences in front of Sedan, and thence backward to the rear of the town, as far as the plateaux of La Garenne and Floiny. The left of the Marshal rested on Giomne, his centre protected by the Chiers and by the villages of Bazeilles and Balan, spread before Sedan in strong positions, and his right and right centre stretched beyond Sedan, holding the Meuse nearly to Floiny northwards. The Fourth German army in the meantime had been marched on the opposite bank of the Chiers, while that of the Crown Prince had come up to the Meuse in full force; and the German commanders now pursued the plan of hemming in MacMahon completely, and having forced him upon Sedan, of destroying him by their overwhelming strength. With this object the French left was to be turned and passed by, the centre was to be fiercely assailed, the right was to be surprised and struck, and the whole German armies, having united in a perfect circle around Sedan, were to accomplish the ruin of their entrapped enemy. Considering the extraordinary disproportion between the hosts about to join in battle--230,000 men at least with from 600 to 700 guns against 110,000 of inferior quality with one-third less pieces--this ambitious and astonishing design may be justified in a military point of view; but, notwithstanding all that has been said, it is by no means to be admired in its conception; and a great commander, who in such a position, should break out from the centre with resolute troops, might cause an attack of this kind to end in a terrible defeat. On the morning of the 1st, the Fourth German Army, in consequence of the neglect of the French outposts, effected the passage of the Chiers without loss; and its right soon turned the French left at Givonne, the defenders of that important point having offered only the feeblest resistance. At the same time a considerable part of the forces of the Crown Prince having crossed the Meuse during the previous night, attacked Bazeilles and Balan in great strength; but here the French showed a bold front, and the battle hung in suspense for hours. Meanwhile, however, the remaining corps of the Third German Army had faced the Meuse at a point much lower down the river, and falling on the extreme right of the French at or near a hill that commands Floiny, had driven it in after a brave defence, and placed themselves in communication with the victorious troops of the German army which had approached them from Givonne. The inner circle was now completed; the French centre still fighting obstinately was obliged to evacuate Bazeilles and Balan; and the whole French army was compelled to recoil inwards upon Sedan, where it was crushed by a death-dealing artillery. No alternative but a surrender remained; the German tactics had completely succeeded; and on the 2nd of September, the last army of France in the field had passed under the yoke, and was a mass of prisoners of war. The Emperor was one of the trophies of the conqueror; MacMahon, more fortunate, had been severely wounded and did not witness the capitulation; but upwards of 90,000 men and from 400 to 500 guns in the hands of the triumphant Germans attested the magnitude of the catastrophe.

The results of the terrible battle of Sedan--a catastrophe unparalleled in the annals of war--were the destruction of the only French army that remained to the nation in the field, the complete isolation of Bazaine at Metz with a certainty of his ultimate surrender, the exposure of Paris to an immediate siege, and the prospect of the subjection of France to the will of an implacable conqueror. At no conjuncture in military history has a strategic error of the gravest kind been fraught with such calamitous effects; and the march to Sedan will long be noted as one of those frightful mistakes of generalship which have deeply influenced the fate of kingdoms. A day or two after this dire event a revolution broke out in Paris; the empire collapsed with the captive Emperor; the Empress Regent was compelled to fly; and, although a Government of National Defence was formed, composed of men of very great eminence, who--after fruitless attempts to negotiate--bravely resolved to carry on the struggle, sooner than consent to the dismemberment of France, hardly anyone believed that the defeated nation would be able to offer serious resistance. The situation of France, indeed, appeared desperate even to her well-wishers--even to those who resented the dictum of the cynical scorner of popular rights, that whether their inhabitants liked it or not, Alsace and Lorraine 'would belong to Prussia'--and for several weeks her exulting enemies remained absolute masters of the situation, and trampled down the defenceless country. The German armies which had fought at Sedan marched without a moment's delay to Paris, arrived before the forts on the 18th September, and, having routed a few raw troops, who endeavoured to harass them at Versailles, invested the capital on all sides, and inclosed it in impenetrable lines. The surging waves of the tremendous invasion meanwhile flowed furiously over the northern provinces, carrying with them devastation and ruin. Strasburg, after a siege which clearly indicated the temper of the people of Alsace, and their assumed sympathy with their 'German liberators,' fell on the 29th September; most of the fortresses of the Vosges, with the exception of Bitsche and Phalsburg, submitted; Toul, which had gallantly resisted for weeks a whole army, met the same fate, and by the close of October the German hosts had cleared their communications with Paris, were masters of the whole region between the Seine and the Rhenish Provinces, and had laid hold of Picardy and the valley of the Loire, which locust-like they devoured by requisitions. The consummation seemed at hand, when after making many attempts to break the iron ring of his foes, Bazaine on the 27th of October surrendered the fortress he had so long held; and the whole remains of the army of the Rhine, the garrison, and a mass of auxiliary troops, became prisoners of war as they defiled from Metz. France seemed under the Caudine forks; the iron had entered into her soul; and even the most far-sighted observers believed that the end of the war was close at hand.

For two whole months after the battle of Sedan, France thus appeared altogether ruined, trampled under the hoof of a ruthless invader. Her capital was invested; her provinces were overrun; fortress after fortress became an easy prey; the grasp of the Prussian upon the country seemed day after day to become stronger, and few signs of resistance appeared except a desultory partisan warfare. Some military critics at Versailles exclaimed that the 'hour of the Latin race had come;' the King of Prussia piously resigned his spirit to the triumph that seemed close at hand; Bismark with grim humour declared that Paris was 'frying in its own fat;' writers disposed complacently of Lorraine and Alsace, and congratulated France that her fate was no worse, and only a small minority of Englishmen entertained a hope for the fallen nation. Yet during all that terrible time vitality was returning to the stricken frame, and France was preparing for mighty efforts which, whether they prove successful or not, have been some of the noblest in history, and are entitled to the highest admiration. The first symptom of reviving animation was seen in the attitude of Paris, which, under the control of General Trochu, a commander who has already won a high place in the annals of fame, put off her Sybarite pride and luxury, and from behind her ramparts prepared herself for a defence which must be pronounced astonishing. Day after day the immense capital which the Germans declared would consume itself by internal revolution and anarchy, and which was not expected to hold out a fortnight, encompassed itself with fresh defensive lines, drilled its raw levies within its walls, and arrayed itself in such a panoply of war that before long it had become evident that its speedy reduction was impossible. The bombardment which it was predicted would soon 'bring these fools to their senses,' was postponed for the simple reason, that it had not the faintest chance of success; and as amazed Europe beheld the works of Paris growing in formidable power, and actually threatening the investing circle, it learned to set a proper value on the profession that 'there was no intention to destroy by fire a noncombatant population,' as if starvation was a more humane process. Meanwhile silently, and hardly observed by the correspondents of the English Press, enormous preparations for the renewal of the contest were made in every part of the country. Arms were produced in prodigious quantities, old soldiers were recalled to their colours, recruits were summoned in hundreds of thousands, the nuclei of several armies were formed, and the splendid memories of 1793-4 were invoked by the representatives of the people, and created wide-spread martial enthusiasm. While Bismark jeered at the 'gentlemen of the pavement,' and cynically redoubled his confident insults, while telegram after telegram announced that town after town was capitulating, France was becoming a vast camp, and sternly, proudly, and in a very different spirit from that in which it began the war, the nation girded up its loins for the strife. M. Gambetta, whose journey from Paris in a balloon excited considerable ridicule at Versailles--for a while--was the mainspring of this remarkable movement, of which, if we cannot predict the success, the patriotism and force cannot be disputed.

The first symptom in the turn of the tide which made itself distinctly perceived, was an engagement which took place on the 9th of November. A mass of raw levies and depôt battalions, to which had been given the name of the Army of the Loire, had been driven out of Orleans in October; and it was generally supposed that it had been all but destroyed. But a general had been placed at its head who had given it consistency and strength; it had been furnished with good artillery, and on the ninth of November it recrossed the Loire and defeated the Bavarian force in its front, which it succeeded in almost surrounding. After this the nuclei of armies, in the west, the north, and the south-east of France, have made their appearance, and are growing formidable; and the military strength of what had been deemed the effete and worn-out nation, has shown itself to be great and threatening. The attitude of the armies of the Loire and of the West has compelled the Germans to draw in almost their whole available forces to cover the immense circle of their lines around Paris; and though as yet they have suffered no reverse, and have even gained some important successes, their enemies still confront them in the field with rapidly improving power and discipline, and so long as they hold their present positions, they are exposed to considerable danger. In fact the German armies round Paris would be placed in imminent peril, if the covering armies on the circumference outside, were to meet anything like a defeat; and as the French levies are day after day acquiring an increase of numbers and force, this is by no means an impossible contingency. Meanwhile the beleaguered capital of France has offered to the besiegers a resistance which has astonished and confounded the world, and its illustrious governor, General Trochu, has literally created out of the young and demoralised troops within its walls, armies of unquestionable valour and worth. These armies commenced offensive operations on the 29th and 30th November, by making immense sorties from the capital; and though they have not succeeded in breaking through the net which hems them in, it is not impossible that they may yet do so. The situation, in fact, has so completely changed since the beginning of the month of November, that all competent persons now think that if Paris can hold out five or six weeks more, the result may be fatal to the Germans. It is almost useless to speculate on events which may be solved before these lines shall be printed, but we venture to hazard a glance into the future. It appears to us that in all probability Paris will ultimately succumb to famine, that it will not be relieved from without, and that General Trochu and his brave troops will have to yield to adverse fortune. This blow, if it happens, will be terrible, but if France continues to evince the resolution and energy of the last two months, its military consequences need not be decisive. In that event the defence of France will have to be undertaken on the Loire; and if her young armies are carefully husbanded; if her generals and statesmen admit the truth that the siege of Paris has gained time for developing her restored vigour; and if no fatal mistakes are made, we believe that she yet may repel the invader. What is most to be feared is, that if Paris falls, a collapse of authority may ensue, that Red Republicanism may lift its head, and that the men who have done such eminent service, may be overthrown by popular fear and terror. But if France is true to herself, if she goes on as she has done lately, and if her forces are rationally handled, she may possibly succeed in shaking off her assailants, and avoid the dismemberment with which she is threatened. Let the nation comprehend that if Paris falls, it will have done wonders in gaining time, and in allowing the spirit of France to revive, and then let it go on with the contest, obedient as a man to the existing Government, and looking steadily to the one great object, deliverance from impending subjugation.

Such has been, up to the middle of December, the memorable war of 1870. We have well-nigh exhausted our space, and can only make a few brief reflections. History has yet to describe the real causes of this terrible and devouring conflict, and the persons really responsible for it; but, allowing that Napoleon was in the wrong for throwing down the gauntlet to Prussia, what is now to be thought of the Power which is carrying on an internecine contest after she has received offers of ample compensation, and is endeavouring to dismember France, and to annex two of her most loyal provinces for the sole purpose, we fear, of making her former rival her vassal? Ever since the interview with Bismark at Ferrières, when, after Sedan, M. Jules Favre proposed to give Prussia more than satisfaction for all losses incurred by her, the war has been one of simple conquest on the part of King William and his minister. France, who at the outset of the conflict may have been, at least through her ruler, in the wrong, is now fighting against an invader for her national existence and her place in history; and beaten down as she is, it is not impossible that she may yet succeed; certainly she is rapidly winning the sympathy which was at first denied her. It is creditable to the mind of England, which was at first almost unanimously on the side of Germany, believing that it was unjustly attacked, that the majority of our countrymen are beginning to see through the ambition of Prussia, to distrust the cynical fraud of Bismark, and to wish well to the nation which is now really fighting for all that makes life dear. But it may be said, 'France has been beaten; the victor offers her peace on the terms of the cession of Alsace and Lorraine, which after all were at one time German; why does she not admit her overthrow, and thus restore quiet to awed Europe?' But to such suggestions, France, we believe, will not listen. We do not see how, until her resources are destroyed, she can consent to abandon Alsace and Lorraine, because these provinces are absolutely necessary to her safety as an important Power, as any military student must know; nor ought she, as a leader of civilization, to give up populations devoted to her to invaders whom they detest. As for the ethnological argument derived from the German origin of their territories, France may fairly adduce their present attitude as evidence of the real sentiments of the inhabitants.

We cannot dwell at the present moment on the lessons to be deduced from this war. Those who think that it conclusively proves the superiority of the German over the French soldier, will do well to read a little history and to study the battles of Jena and Austerlitz. No doubt on several occasions the French have fought badly under the moral depression of repeated and overwhelming defeats; but nothing has yet been seen in this campaign compared to the demoralization of Prussia in 1806. Nor may we assume that the French military character has deteriorated, though a corrupt layer of Imperialism has injured the upper ranks of society; the nation which after crushing reverses can still show such an indomitable front, will be yet found by its foes to be terrible. What the campaign proves is the immense superiority of German generalship over its antagonists, a superiority which, seconded by irresistible force, and by great advantages in artillery, has produced results of an astonishing kind, yet not more marvellous than those witnessed sixty years ago on the other side when Napoleon commanded the Grand Army. As to the military operations of the French commanders, they have been throughout as bad as possible. From the outset of the campaign to the first battles we see nothing but reckless rashness; we then behold vacillation and weakness followed by the astonishing blunders of Sedan; and the news which has just arrived of the defeats of the Army of the Loire at Orleans, prove, we fear, that another series of mistakes in the plainest strategy have been committed. These have been the causes of the disasters of France of which an able adversary has reaped the advantage; and to these we should add the enervating results of Imperialism on the upper classes, corruption and peculation in the higher ranks of the army, the false confidence engendered by martial traditions, and not least, the numerical inferiority of the French forces to those of the Germans. Yet we do not doubt that if France continues her present resolute attitude, if common sense prevails in her councils, if she remains united and patriotic, she may yet pluck safety out of her dangers; and in a long and internecine struggle the Power which has the command of the sea, superior wealth, and more compact unity, may in our judgment ultimately triumph. For ourselves this cruel and fearful war ought to teach us to look after our national defences, to array ourselves in complete panopoly, to take good assurance that this England of ours, the home of freedom and good government, shall at least be secure in the shock of arms now crashing over a large part of the Continent. It cannot be questioned that the sudden rise of Bismarkian Prussia is a threat and a peril to the world; the demands of Gortschakoff and the letters of Bernstorff already prove that it bodes no good to England; and we shall do better to look after our fleets, and to put our military organization in order, than to believe the idyls of sentimental professors who assure us that the plunderer of Silesia, the divider of Poland, and the despoiler of Denmark, is 'wise, pious, moral, and unambitious.' If it is not our duty to interfere actively in the interest of the balance of Europe, we, at least, in the conflict now rending France ought to read a warning address to ourselves; and while the boundaries of nations are being shifted, while justice and right are in danger of being trampled under foot, that brute force may work its will, we ought to take good heed that this our England shall retain her high position in the world, shall be able when necessary to lift her hand in the cause of civilization and human progress, shall never 'lie' at the proud foot of a conqueror, shall be as powerful as she is great and glorious.

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE.

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, AND TRAVELS.

History of England, from the Earliest to the Present Time. In Five Volumes. By Sir EDWARD S. CREASY, M.A., Emeritus Professor of History in University College, London; late Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. Vol. II. Completing the History during the Early and Middle Ages. Walton. 1870.

Sir Edward Creasy's second volume embraces nine reigns, from Edward II. to Richard III., both inclusive. We consider the strong point of it, and that which has had most of the writer's heart, to be the constitutional and social history. The narrative of public and military transactions has not the same merit; and especially that towards the latter end, including the Wars of the Roses, which is too compressed--we had almost said too perfunctory--to be even interesting. In the earlier portions, where the author takes all the room that he wants, he lets us see that he does not lack the power of placing the events of war in an instructive light. Coming to Edward III.'s reign, he corrects the impression that is probably entertained by many, that the great contest with France arose from a wanton and ambitious claim upon the crown of that kingdom; and shows, by a very careful statement of facts and dates, that it was Philip of Valois' war, not Edward's.

Few of our historians have attempted thoroughly to penetrate Edward's plan in that famous expedition of 1346-7, in which he traversed the North of France, landing at La Hogue, and embarking at Calais, just as though it had been a piratical expedition needing no further explanation. Sir Edward makes a good suggestion as to the commencement and early stage of the invasion; namely, that one great object of it was to deliver a blow at the nourishing woollen manufactures of Normandy, and thereby relieve English trading towns from their powerful competitors in that quarter. But we think he fails to account satisfactorily for Edward's movements after the taking of Caen, when he assigns it as a sufficient reason for his advance on Paris (after being obliged to turn away from Rouen, be it remembered), that he wished to divert French troops from the South of France, where a small English army was being hard pressed. But could not the king of England have effected such a purpose by establishing himself in Normandy, where he rested on his fleet? To dismiss his ships, as he did at Caen, and to take a moderate force of some 40,000 men into the interior without a base of operations, in the hope of relieving a distant province, would not have been worthy of the genius of Edward III. We have little doubt that after achieving his success as far as Caen, if not before, Calais itself (not Paris, nor yet Guienne) was in his eye. In fact, the speech of Sir Geoffrey Harcourt to Edward, at Caen, reported by Froissart, distinctly recognises Calais as the ultimate goal of the expedition. His having found the North of France so defenceless (to say nothing of his having taken prisoner at Caen the Count of Guisnes, on the border of whose territory Calais lay), probably suggested the feasibility of capturing Calais on the land side. Hence the immediate attempt to cross the Seine at Rouen; and hence, when this failed, the march up the Seine--not to relieve Guienne, but to effect a passage of the river. The famous fortress fell to Edward as the result of a bold calculation, not as a piece of good luck after a desperate escapade. To judge how tempting it must have seemed to him, even so far off as Caen, we have only to reflect on the immediate use he made of it as soon as it was his own; to say nothing of his resolution in maintaining a longer winter siege. He immediately converted what had before been a piratical stronghold against him into an English colony; besides which he made it the Continental staple for the English wool trade, by which means he delivered himself from certain Flemish towns, which hitherto had converted his necessities into their own gains. Those who understand something of English State finance in this reign, and the peculiar importance of the woollen trade to Edward as a financier, will be able to comprehend his views when he resolved on obtaining hold of this important position upon the Straits of Dover.

In a fresh history of Edward III.'s reign, various episodes, of minor importance, indeed, but ineradicable from the English mind, will always be turned to, to see how far the new lights will permit the old favourites of the popular imagination to stand their ground. Let us turn, then, to the Ostrich Feathers. Mr. Longman, in his recent 'Life of Edward III.,' simply remarks that the current story is a very doubtful one; while Sir Edward Creasy's remark is, that there is no reason at all to doubt it. But passing observations like these, on the one side or on the other, entirely fail to do justice to a very interesting series of papers (not referred to by either of these authors), that may and ought to be read in the 'Archæologia,' mentioning the curious discovery of a contemporary statement of the popular story (Camden having been hitherto the earliest authority for it), which, nevertheless, cannot overcome the strong evidence marshalled by the learned antiquaries, that the feathers really came from Hainault, and through Queen Philippa, not from Bohemia at all, or its gallant old king. The story of the six haltered citizens of Calais Sir Edward accepts likewise, and finds himself able to support it by fresh evidence. In fact, there was never any sufficient reason to doubt it, and our historic scepticism is apt sometimes to be over-scrupulous. For the anecdote, singular as it is, is by no means unique: the incident mentioned in 1 Kings, xx. 31, if not strictly parallel, was quite sufficient to have originated the custom in the picturesque days of the Middle Ages, with the genius of which, too, it entirely harmonises. Monstrelet records a similar instance in the campaigns of the Duke of Bedford, in the following century; and another in Papal history, belonging to 1540, may be read in Ranke.

A narrative work ought not to be dismissed without an examination of its dates. And here we are obliged to admit that our narrator has not shown sufficient vigilance. The death of Roger Mortimer, Queen Isabella's favourite, is undated, although we are carefully told that Edward III.'s real reign only began from that event. One-half of the narrative of his overthrow is on a page headed 1328, and the other half under 1330. The death of the Black Prince is described and its importance to public affairs is acknowledged, but it is undated. The page on which it is narrated is headed 1376; but the next page, dealing with the events of the moment, is dated 1377. The battle of Cressy is dated August 25th, a day too soon. Henry V.'s setting sail for the Agincourt campaign is twice on one page dated Sunday, August 12th, instead of Sunday, August 11th. The Duke of Bedford engages the enemy at the mouth of the Seine on August 18th (it should be 13th), returning home August 16th. The famous coronation of Charles VII. at Rheims, when the Maid of Orleans assisted, is dated July 18th, instead of Sunday, July 17th. Lord Talbot fell in the battle of Castillon, and this is dated July 23rd, a date of that hero's death quite new to us, although we have seen four others recorded. But we do not at all feel confident that our author gives this figure as the result of any special inquiry. We are sure that our writers will never be induced to guard wakefully against the crime of circulating false dates until their eyes are thoroughly open to the dreadful state in which our popular chronology stands, making it unsafe for us to adopt any figures whatever without every means of verification in our power.

We have expressed ourselves freely as to where this volume might, in our opinion, have been stronger. We therefore gladly invite attention to what we have felt Sir Edward Creasy's chief success to be, and to what we consider our chief gains in possessing this record of his studies.

The constitutional and social history of the period comprised in this volume will soon attract the reader's warm interest; for he will perceive that it is not merely inserted for the sake of filling up a department, but written con amore, and out of full stores of knowledge. The author has made diligent and zealous use of the numerous and valuable works published under the Master of the Rolls, and has not lost sight of the researches of our local antiquarian societies, and other good authorities. Matters which in most current histories are simply referred to as known, and which therefore remain long unknown, such as obsolete mediæval taxes, the nature of impeachment, the council, and the like, are here carefully explained, which makes the history popular in the best sense, as well as a thorough student's book. What he calls the Thirty Years' War between capital and labour, from the Black Death to Wat Tyler, is a most lucid and interesting piece of social history, fully worked out, and by no means useless in view of present-day questions. As the result, Tyler's insurrection, as well as Cade's, will wear a new complexion, we suspect, in the minds of many general readers.

One feature of Sir Edward's pages will certainly gratify not a few; we mean the conspicuous absence of partisanship and all unfairness of statement. While forming his judgments on the past, he succeeds in throwing himself into the times he is describing, and consequently preserves a calm and reasonable tone, without being querulous and hasty. A striking instance of this judicial temper occurs in his account of persecuting Arundel and the frightful statute De heretico Comburendo, the tenor of his observations on which we hope no one will be so uncandid as to misunderstand or misrepresent. The danger of such a habit of mind is, of course, a liability to that amiable weakness which wants to whitewash everybody and palliate everything; but this danger we think Sir Edward succeeds in avoiding. He has a moral firmness of his own, and an independence of mind which would not permit him to be simply an allowance-maker. If we wanted a proof that he has his strong partialities, unfalteringly expressed in the right direction, we should point to his chapter on Wycliffe, which also is the weightier, from its being, as usual, discriminating. Here, facing the great religious movement of the Reformation, our historian expresses himself as a Christian believer, and one who venerates the Holy Bible, and as though he considered himself writing for those who ought to be both.

Lectures and Essays. By Professor SEELEY. Macmillan & Co.

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